UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


t^ 


0  ra£ 


by 
EDMUND    W.    GOSSE 

AUTHOR  OF 

'MADRIGALS,  SONGS  AND   SONNETS"   "LIFE  OF  CONGREVE  ' 
"FROM  SHAKESPEARE  TO  POPE" 


Enolisb  flfcen  of  Xetters 

EDITED   BY 

JOHN    MORLEY 


>  »    »   *      »  a 


••  \ :  •   .■■ 


HARPER  &   BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW     YORK      AND     LONDON 

1902 


;j  1 


81 


I  »  * 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

As  a  biographical  study,  this  little  volume  differs  in  ono 
important  respect  fro?n  its  predecessors  in  this  series.  Ex- 
pansion, instead  of  compression,  has  had  to  be  my  method 
in  treating  the  existing  lives  of  Gray.  Of  these  none  have 
hitherto  been  published  except  in  connexion  with  some 
part  of  his  works,  and  none  has  attempted  to  go  at  all 
into  detail.  Mitford's,  which  is  the  fullest,  would  occupy, 
in  its  purely  biographical  section,  not  more  than  thirty  of 
these  pages. 

The  materials  I  have  used  are  chiefly  taken  from  the 
following  sources : 

I.  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Gray,  edited  by  Mason  in 
1774.  This  work  consists  of  a  very  meagre  thread  of 
biography  connecting  a  collection  of  letters,  which  would 
be  more  valuable,  if  Mason  had  not  tampered  with  them, 
altering,  omitting,  and  re-dating  at  his  own  free  will. 

II.  Mitford's  Life  of  Thomas  Gray,  prefixed  to  the 
1814  edition  of  the  Poems.  This  is  very  valuable  so  far 
as  it  goes.  The  Rev.  John  Mitford  was  a  young  clergy- 
man, who  was  born  ten  years  after  the  death  of  Gray,  and 
who  made  it  the  business  of  his  life  to  collect  from  such 
survivors  as  remembered  Gray  all  the  documents  and  an- 
ecdotes that  he  could  secure.  This  is  the  life  which  was 
altered  and  enlarged,  to  be  prefixed  to  the  Eton  Gray,  in 
1845. 


vi  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

III.  Mitford's  edition  of  the  Works  of  Gray,  published 
in  4  vols.,  in  1836.  This  contained  the  genuine  text  of 
most  of  the  letters  printed  by  Mason,  and  a  large  number 
which  now  saw  the  light  for  the  first  time,  addressed  to 
Wharton,  Chute,  Nichols,  and  others. 

IV.  Correspondence  and  Reminiscences  of  the  Rev.  Nor- 
ton Nichols,  edited  by  Mitford,  in  1843. 

V.  The  Correspondence  of  Gray  and  Mason,  to  which 
are  added  other  letters,  not  before  printed,  an  exceedingly 
valuable  collection,  not  widely  enough  known,  which  was 
published  by  Mitford  in  1853. 

VI.  The  Works  of  Gray,  as  edited  in  2  vols,  by  Mathias, 
in  1814;  this  is  the  only  publication  in  which  the  Pem- 
broke MSS.  have  hitherto  been  made  use  of. 

VII.  Souvenirs  de  C.  V.  de  Bonstetten,  1832. 

VIII.  The  Correspondence  of  Horace  Walpole. 

IX.  Gray's  and  Stonehewer's  MSS.,  as  preserved  in 
Pembroke  College,  Cambridge. 

X.  MS.  Notes  and  Letters  by  Gray,  Cole,  and  others,  in 
the  British  Museum. 

By  far  the  best  account  of  Gray,  not  written  by  a  per- 
sonal friend,  is  the  brief  summary  of  his  character  and 
genius  contributed  by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  to  "  The  Eng- 
lish Poets." 

No  really  good  or  tolerably  full  edition  of  Gray's  Works 
is  in  existence.  Neither  his  English  nor  his  Latin  Poems 
have  been  edited  in  any  collection  which  is  even  approxi- 
mately complete ;  and  his  Letters,  although  they  are  bet- 
ter given  by  Mitford  than  by  Mason,  are  very  far  from 
being  in  a  satisfactory  condition.  In  many  of  them  the 
(\ate  is  wrongly  printed ;  and  some,  which  bear  no  date, 
are  found,  by  internal  evidence,  to  be  incorrectly  attributed 
by  Mitford.     No  attempt  has  ever  been  made  to  collect 


PREFATORY  NOTE.  vii 

Gray'a  writings  into  one  single  publication.  I  am  sorry 
to  say  that  all  my  efforts  to  obtain  a  sight  of  Gray's 
unpublished  letters  and  facetious  poems,  many  of  which 
were  sold  at  Sotheby  &  Wilkinson's  on  the  4th  of  August, 
1854,  hr.ve  failed.  On  the  other  hand,  the  examination 
of  the  Pembroke  MSS.  has  supplied  me  with  a  consider- 
able amount  of  very  exact  and  important  biographical  in- 
formation which  has  never  seen  the  light  until  now. 

I  have  to  express  my  warmest  thanks  to  the  Master 
and  Fellows  of  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  who  per- 
mitted me  to  examine  these  invaluable  MSS. ;  to  Mr.  R. 
A.  Neil,  of  Pembroke,  and  Mr.  J.  W.  Clark,  of  Trinity, 
whose  kindness  in  examining  archives,  and  copying  docu- 
ments for  me,  has  been  great ;  to  Mr.  R.  T.  Turner,  who 
has  placed  his  Gray  MSS.  at  ray  disposal ;  to  Professor 
Sidney  Colvin  and  Mr.  Basil  Champneys,  who  have  given 
me  the  benefit  of  their  advice  on  those  points  of  art  and 
architecture  which  are  essential  to  a  study  of  Gray;  and 
to  Mr.  Edward  Scott  and  Mr.  Richard  Garnctt,  for  valu- 
able assistance  in  the  Library  of  the  British  Museum.  For 
much  help  in  forming  an  idea  of  the  world  in  which  Gray 
moved,  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Christopher  Wordsworth's 
books  on  Caui bridge  in  the  eighteenth  century. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Pag« 

Childhood  and  Early  College  Life 1 


CHAPTER  II. 
The  Grand  Tour 23 

CHAPTER  III. 

Stoke-Pogis.—  Death  of  West.— First  English  Poems    46 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Life  at  Cambridge 68 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  "Elegy."— Six  Poems.— Death  of  Gray's  Aunt 
and  Mother 93 

CHAPTER  VI. 
The  Pindaric  Odes 117 

CHAPTER  VII. 

BRmsn  Museum. — Norton  Nictols 140 

1* 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Pass 

Life  at  Cambridge.— English  Travels     .    .    .    .    „  164 


CHAPTER  IX. 

BONSTETTEN. — DEATH .      . 191 

CHAPTER  X. 
Posthumous  .    .        . 210 


GRAY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

r 

CHILDHOOD    AND    EARLY    COLLEGE    LIFE. 

Thomas  Gray  was  born  at  his  father's  house  in  Cornhill, 
on  the  2Cth  of  December,  171G.  Of  his  ancestry  nothing 
is  known.  Late  in  life,  when  he  was  a  famous  poet,  Baron 
Gray  of  Gray  in  Forfarshire  claimed  him  as  a  relation,  but 
with  characteristic  serenity  he  put  the  suggestion  from 
him.  "I  know  no  pretence,"  he  said  to  Beattie,  " that  I 
have  to  the  honour  Lord  Gray  is  pleased  to  do  me;  but 
if  his  lordship  chooses  to  own  me,  it  certainly  is  not  my 
business  to  deny  it."  The  only  proof  of  his  connexion 
with  this  ancient  family  is  that  he  possessed  a  bloodstone 
seal,  which  had  belonged  to  his  father,  engraved  with  Lord 
Gray's  arms,  gules  a  lion  rampant,  within  a  bordure  en- 
grailed argent.  These  have  been  accepted  at  Pembroke 
College  as  the  poet's  arms,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  may 
say  that  he  sprang  on  both  sides  from  the  lower-middle 
classes.  His  paternal  grandfather  had  been  a  successful 
merchant,  and  died  leaving  Philip,  apparently  his  only 
son,  a  fortune  of  10,000/.  Through  various  vicissitudes 
this  money  passed,  at  length  aluiobt  reaching  the  poet's 


2  GRAY.  [chap. 

hands  in  no  very  much  diminished  quantity,  for  Philip 
Gray  seems  to  have  been  as  clever  in  business  as  he  was 
extravagant.  He  was  born  in  1676.  Towards  his  thir- 
tieth year  he  married  Miss  Dorothy  Antrobus,  a  Bucking- 
hamshire lady,  about  twenty  years  of  age,  who,  with  her 
sister  Mary,  a  young  woman  three  years  her  senior,  kept 
a  milliner's  shop  in  the  City.  They  belonged,  however,  to 
a  genteel  family,  for  the  remaining  sister,  Anna,  was  the 
wife  of  a  prosperous  country  lawyer,  Mr.  Jonathan  Rogers, 
and  the  two  brothers,  Robert  and  John  Antrobus,  were 
fellows  of  Cambridge  colleges,  and  afterwards  tutors  at 
Eton.  These  five  persons  take  a  prominent  place  in  the 
subsequent  life  of  the  poet,  whereas  he  never  mentions 
any  of  the  Grays.  His  father  had  certainly  one  sister, 
Mrs.  Oliffe,  a  woman  of  violent  temper,  who  married  a 
gentleman  of  Norfolk,  and  was  well  out  of  the  way  till 
after  the  death  of  Gray's  mother,  when  she  began  to 
haunt  him,  and  only  died  two  or  three  months  before  he 
did.  She  seems  to  have  resembled  Philip  Gray  in  char- 
acter, for  the  poet,  always  singularly  respectful  and  loyal 
to  his  other  elderly  relations,  calls  her  "the  spawn  of 
Cerberus  upon  the  Dragon  of  Wantley." 

Dorothy  Gray  was  unfortunate  in  her  married  life ;  her 
husband  was  violent,  jealous,  and  probably  mad.  Of  her 
twelve  children,  Thomas  was  the  only  one  whom  she 
reared,  but  Mason  is  doubtless  wrong  in  saying  that  the 
eleven  who  died  were  all  suffocated  by  infantile  convul- 
sions. Mrs.  Gray  speaks  in  her  "case"  of  the  expense 
of  providing  "  all  manner  of  apparel  for  her  children." 
Thomas,  however,  certainly  would  have  died  as  an  infant, 
but  that  his  mother,  finding  him  in  a  fit,  opened  a  vein 
with  her  scissors,  by  that  means  relieving  the  determina- 
tion of  blood  to  the  brain.     His  father  neglected  him,  and 


i.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  R 

he  was  brought  up  by  bis  mother  and  his  aunt  Mary.  He 
also  mentions  with  touching  affection,  in  speaking  of  the 
death  of  a  Mrs.  Bonfoy  in  1763,  that  "she  taught  me  to 
pray."  Home  life  at  Cornhill  was  rendered  miserable  by 
the  cruelties  of  the  father,  and  it  seems  that  the  boy's 
uncle,  Robert  Antrobus,  took  him  away  to  his  own  house 
at  Burnham,  in  Bucks.  This  gentleman  was  a  fellow  of 
Pctcrhouse,  as  his  younger  brother  Thomas  was  of  King's 
College,  Cambridge.  With  Robert  the  boy  studied  botany, 
and  became  learned,  according  to  Horace  Walpole,  in  the 
virtues  of  herbs  and  simples.  Unfortunately,  this  uncle 
died  on  January  23,  1729,  at  the  age  of  fifty;  there  still 
exists  a  copy  of  Waller's  Poems  in  which  Gray  has  writ- 
ten his  own  name,  with  this  date ;  perhaps  it  was  an  heir- 
loom of  his  uncle. 

In  one  of  Philip  Gray's  fits  of  extravagance  he  seems  to 
have  had  a  full-length  of  his  son  painted,  about  this  time, 
by  the  fashionable  portrait-painter  of  the  day,  Jonathan 
Richardson  the  elder.  This  picture  is  now  in  the  Fitz- 
william  Museum,  at  Cambridge.  The  head  is  good  in 
colour  and  modelling ;  a  broad,  pale  brow,  sharp  nose  and 
chin,  large  eyes,  and  a  pert  expression  give  a  lively  idea 
of  the  precocious  and  not  very  healthy  young  gentleman 
of  thirteen.  He  is  dressed  in  a  blue  satin  coat,  lined  with 
pale  shot  silk,  and  crosses  his  stockinged  legs  so  as  to  dis- 
play dapper  slippers  of  russet  leather.  His  father,  how- 
ever, absolutely  refused  to  educate  him,  and  he  was  sent 
to  Eton,  about  1727,  under  the  auspices  of  his  uncles, 
and  at  the  expense  of  his  mother.  On  the  26th  of  April 
of  the  same  year,  a  smart  child  of  ten,  with  the  airs  of  a 
little  dancing-master,  a  child  who  was  son  of  a  prime-min- 
ister, and  had  kissed  the  King's  hand,  entered  the  same 
school;  and  some  intellectual  impulse  brought  them  to- 


4  GRAY.  [chap. 

gether  directly  in  a  friendship  that  was  to  last,  with  a 
short  interval,  until  the  death  of  one  of  them  more  than 
forty  years  afterwards. 

It  is  not  certain  that  Horace  Walpole  at  once  adopted 
that  attitude  of  frivolous  worship  which  he  preserved  to- 
wards Gray  in  later  life.  He  was  a  brilliant  little  social 
meteor  at  Eton,  and  Gray  was  probably  attracted  first  to 
him.  Yet  it  was  characteristic  of  the  poet  throughout 
life  that  he  had  always  to  be  sought,  and  even  at  Eton 
his  talents  may  have  attracted  Walpole's  notice.  At  all 
events,  they  became  fast  friends,  and  fostered  in  one  an- 
other mtellectual  pretensions  of  an  alarming  nature.  Both 
were  oppidans  and  not  collegers,  and  therefore  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  trace  them  minutely  at  Eton.  But  we  know  that 
they  "  never  made  an  expedition  against  bargemen,  or  won 
a  match  at  cricket,"  for  this  Walpole  confesses;  but  they 
wandered  through  the  playing-fields  at  Eton  tending  a 
visionary  flock,  and  "  sighing  out  some  pastoral  name  to 
the  echo  of  the  cascade  under  the  bridge "  which  spans 
Chalvey  Brook.  An  avenue  of  limes  amongst  the  elms 
is  still  named  the  "  Poet's  Walk,"  and  is  connected  by  tra- 
dition with  Gray.  They  were  a  pair  of  weakly  little  boys, 
and  in  these  days  of  brisk  athletic  training  would  hardly 
be  allowed  to  exist.  Another  amiable  and  gentle  boy,  still 
more  ailing  than  themselves,  was  early  drawn  to  them  by 
sympathy  :  this  was  Richard  West,  a  few  months  younger 
than  Gray  and  older  than  Walpole,  a  son  of  the  Richard 
West  who  was  made  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland  when  he 
was  only  thirty-five,  and  who  then  immediately  died ;  his 
mother's  father,  dead  before  young  Richard's  birth,  had 
been  the  famous  Bishop  Gilbert  Burnet.  A  fourth  friend 
was  Thomas  Ashton,  who  soon  slips  out  of  our  history, 
but  who  survived  until  1775. 


i.j  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  5 

These  four  boys  formed  a  "  quadruple  alliance  "  of  the 
warmest  friendship.  West  seemed  the  genius  amongst 
them ;  he  was  a  nervous  and  precocious  lad,  who  made 
verses  in  his  sleep,  cultivated  not  only  a  public  Latin 
muse,  but  also  a  private  English  one,  and  dazzled  his  com- 
panions by  the  ease  and  fluency  of  his  pen.  His  poetical 
remains — to  which  we  shall  presently  return,  since  they 
are  intimately  connected  with  the  development  of  Gray's 
genius — are  of  sufficient  merit  to  permit  us  to  believe  that 
had  he  lived  he  might  have  achieved  a  reputation  amongst 
the  minor  poets  of  his  age.  Neither  Shenstone  nor  Beat- 
tie  had  written  anything  so  considerable  when  they  reach- 
ed the  age  at  which  West  died.  His  character  was  ex- 
tremely winning,  and  in  his  correspondence  with  Gray,  as 
far  as  it  has  been  preserved,  we  find  him  at  first  the  more 
serious  and  the  more  affectionate  friend.  But  the  symp- 
toms of  his  illness,  which  seem  to  have  closely  resembled 
those  of  Keats,  destroyed  the  superficial  sweetness  of  his 
nature,  and  towards  the  end  we  find  Gray  the  more  sober 
and  the  more  manly  of  the  two. 

Besides  the  inner  circle  of  Walpole,  West,  and  Ashton, 
there  was  an  outer  ring  of  Eton  friends,  whose  names 
have  been  preserved  in  connexion  with  Gray's.  Amongst 
these  was  George  Montagu,  grandnephew  of  the  great 
Earl  of  Halifax;  Stonehewer,  a  very  firm  and  loyal  friend, 
with  whom  Gray's  intimacy  deepened  to  the  end  of  his 
life  ;  Clarke,  afterwards  a  fashionable  physician  at  Epsom  ; 
and  Jacob  Bryant,  the  antiquary,  whose  place  in  class  was 
next  to  Gray's  through  one  term.  With  these  he  doubt- 
less shared  those  delights  of  swimming,  birds' -nesting, 
hoops,  and  trap-ball  which  he  has  described,  in  ornate 
eighteenth-century  fashion,  in  the  famous  stanza  of  his 
Eton  Ode : 


6  GRAY.  [chap. 

"  Say,  Father  Thames,  for  thou  hast  seen 

Full  mauy  a  sprightly  race, 
Disporting  on  thy  margent  green, 

The  paths  of  pleasure  trace ; 
Who  foremost  now  delights  to  cleave, 
With  pliant  arm,  thy  glassy  wave ; 

The  captive  linnet  which  enthral  ? 
What  idle  progeny  succeed 
To  chase  the  rolling  circle's  speed, 

Or  urge  the  flying  ball  ?" 

But  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  was  much 
more  amply  occupied  in  helping  "grateful  Science"  to 
adore  "  her  Henry's  holy  shade."  Learning  was  still  pre- 
ferred to  athletics  at  our  public  schools,  and  Gray  was 
naturally  drawn  by  temperament  to  study.  It  has  always 
been  understood  that  he  versified  at  Eton,  but  the  earliest 
lines  of  his  which  have  hitherto  been  known  are  as  late  as 
1736,  when  he  had  been  nearly  two  years  at  Cambridge. 
I  have,  however,  been  fortunate  enough  to  find  among  the 
MSS.  in  Pembroke  College  a  "  play-exercise  at  Eton,"  in 
the  poet's  handwriting,  which  has  never  been  printed,  and 
which  is  valuable  as  showing  us  the  early  ripeness  of  his 
scholarship.  It  is  a  theme,  in  seventy  -  three  hexameter 
verses,  commencing  with  the  line — 

"  Pendet  Homo  incertus  gemini  ad  confinia  mundi." 

The  normal  mood  of  man  is  described  as  one  of  hesi- 
tation between  the  things  of  Heaven  and  the  things  of 
Earth  ;  he  assumes  that  all  nature  is  made  for  his  enjoy- 
ment, but  soon  experience  steps  in  and  proves  to  him  the 
contrary;  he  endeavours  to  fathom  the  laws  of  nature, 
but  their  scheme  evades  him,  and  he  learns  that  his  effort 
is  a  futile  one.  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man, 
and  yet  how  narrow  a  theme !     Man  yearns  forever  after 


i.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  7 

superhuman  power  aud  accomplishment,  only  to  discover 
the  narrow  scope  of  his  possibilities,  and  he  has  at  last  to 
curb  his  ambition,  and  be  contented  with  what  God  and 
nature  have  ordained.  The  thoughts  are  beyond  a  boy, 
though  borrowed  in  the  main  from  Horace  and  Pope; 
while  the  verse  is  still  more  remarkable,  being  singularly 
pure  and  sonorous,  though  studded,  in  boyish  fashion, 
with  numerous  tags  from  Virgil.  What  is  really  notice- 
able about  this  early  effusion  is  the  curious  way  in  which 
it  prefigures  its  author's  maturer  moral  and  elegiac  man- 
ner ;  we  see  the  writer's  bias  and  the  mode  in  which  he 
will  approach  ethical  questions,  and  we  detect  in  this  little 
"play-exercise"  a  shadow  of  the  stately  didactic  reverie 
of  the  Odes.  As  this  poem  has  never  been  described,  I 
may  be  permitted  to  quote  a  few  of  the  verses : 

"  Plurimus  (hie  error,  demensque  libido  lacessit) 
In  superos  ecelumque  ruit,  sedesque  relinquit, 
Quas  natura  dedit  proprias,  jussitque  tueri. 
Humani  sorteni  generis  pars  altera  luget, 
Invidet  armento,  et  campi  sibi  vindicat  herbam. 
0  quis  me  in  pecoris  felicia  transferet  arva, 
In  loca  pastorum  deserta,  atque  otia  dia  ? 
Cur  mibi  non  Lyncisne  oculi,  vel  odora  canum  vis 
Additur,  aut  gressus  cursu  glomerare  potestas  ? 
Aspice  ubi,  teneres  dum  texit  aranea  casses, 
Funditur  in  telam,  et  late  per  stamina  vivit ! 
Quid  mihi  non  tactus  eadem  exquisita  facultas 
Taurorumve  tori  solidi,  pennaeve  volucrum." 

In  the  face  of  such  lines  as  these,  and  bearing  in  mind 
"Walpole's  assertion  that  "  Gray  never  was  a  boy,"  we  may 
form  a  tolerably  exact  idea  of  the  shy  and  studious  lad, 
already  a  scholar  and  a  moralist,  moving  somewhat  grave- 
ly and  precociously  through  the  classes  of  that  venerable 
B  25 


8  GRAY.  [chap. 

college  which  has  since  adopted  him  as  her  typical  child, 
and  which  now  presents  to  each  emerging  pupil  a  hand- 
some selection  from  the  works  of  the  Etonian  par  excel- 
lence, Thomas  Gray. 

In  1734  the  quadruple  alliance  broke  up.  Gray,  and 
probably  Ashton,  proceeded  to  Cambridge,  where  the  for- 
mer was  for  a  short  time  a  pensioner  of  Pembroke  Hall, 
but  went  over,  on  the  3d  of  July,  as  a  fellow-commoner,  to 
his  uncle  Antrobus's  college,  Peterhouse.1  Walpole  went 
up  to  London  for  the  winter,  and  did  not  make  his  ap- 
pearance at  King's  College,  Cambridge,  until  March,  1735. 
West,  meanwhile,  had  been  isolated  from  his  friends  by 
being  sent  to  Oxford,  where  he  entered  Christ  Church 
much  against  his  will.  For  a  year  the  young  undergrad- 
uates are  absolutely  lost  to  sight.  If  they  wrote  to  one 
another,  their  letters  are  missing,  and  the  correspondence 
of  Walpole  and  of  Gray  with  West  begins  in  Novem- 
ber, 1735. 

But  in  the  early  part  of  that  year  a  very  striking  inci- 
dent occurred  in  the  Gray  family,  an  incident  that  was 
perfectly  unknown  until,  in  1807,  a  friend  of  Haslewood's 
happened  to  discover,  in  a  volume  of  MS.  law-cases,  a  case 
submitted  by  Mrs.  Dorothy  Gray  to  the  eminent  civilian, 
John  Audley,  in  February.  1735.  In  this  extraordinary 
document  the  poet's  mother  states  that  for  nearly  thirty 
years,  that  is  to  say,  for  the  whole  of  her  married  life,  she 

1  The  Master  of  Peterhouse  has  kindly  copied  for  me,  from  the 
register  of  admissions  at  that  college,  this  entry,  hitherto  inedited  : 
"Jul:  3tl0-  1734.  Thomas  Gray  Middlesexiensis  in  schola  publica 
Etonensi  institutus,  anuosque  natus  18  (petente  Tutore  suo)  Clusetur 
admisus  ad  Mensam  Pensionarioruin  sub  Tutore  et  Fidejussore  M™- 
Birkett,  sed  ea  lege  ut  brevi  se  bistat  iu  collegiy  et  examinatoribua 
se  probet." 


i.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  9 

lias  received  no  support  from  her  husband,  but  has  de- 
pended entirely  on  the  receipts  of  the  shop  kept  by  her- 
self and  her  sister ;  moreover  "  almost  providing  every- 
thing for  her  son  whilst  at  Eton  school,  and  now  he  is 
at  Peter-House  in  Cambridge." 

"  Notwithstanding  which,  almost  ever  since  he  (her  husband)  hath 
been  married,  he  hath  used  her  in  the  most  inhuman  manner,  by 
beating,  kicking,  punching,  and  with  the  most  vile  and  abusive  lan- 
guage, that  she  hath  been  in  the  utmost  fear  and  danger  of  her  life, 
and  hath  been  obliged  this  last  year  to  quit  her  bed,  and  lie  with  her 
sister.  This  she  was  resolved,  if  possible,  to  bear ;  not  to  leave  her 
shop  of  trade  for  the  sake  of  her  son,  to  be  able  to  assist  in  the  main- 
tenance of  him  at  the  University,  since  his  father  won't." 

Mrs.  Gray  goes  on  to  state  that  her  husband  has  an  in- 
sane jealousy  of  all  the  world,  and  even  of  her  brother, 
Thomas  Antrobus,  and  that  he  constantly  threatens  "to 
ruin  himself  to  undo  her  and  his  only  son,"  having  now 
gone  so  far  as  to  give  Mary  Antrobus  notice  to  quit  the 
shop  in  Cornhill  at  Midsummer  next.  If  he  carries  out 
this  threat,  Mrs.  Gray  says  that  she  must  go  with  her 
sister,  to  help  her  "  in  the  said  trade,  for  her  own  and 
her  son's  support."  She  asks  legal  counsel  which  way 
will  be  best  "  for  her  to  conduct  herself  in  this  unhappy 
circumstance."  Mr.  Audley  writes  sympathetically  from 
Doctors  Commons,  but  civilly  and  kindly  tells  her  that 
she  can  find  no  protection  in  the  English  law. 

This  strange  and  tantalising  document,  the  genuineness 
of  which  has  never  been  disputed,  is  surrounded  by  diffi- 
culties to  a  biographer.  The  known  wealth  and  occa- 
sional extravagances  of  Philip  Gray  make  it  hard  to  un- 
derstand why  he  should  be  so  rapacious  of  his  wife's  little 
earnings,  and  at  the  same  time  so  barbarous  in  his  neglect 


10  GRAY.  [chap. 

of  her  and  of  his  son.  That  there  is  not  one  word  or  hint 
of  family  troubles  in  Gray's  copious  correspondence  is 
what  we  might  expect  from  so  proud  and  reticent  a  nat- 
ure. But  the  gossipy  Walpole  must  have  known  all  this, 
and  Mason  need  not  have  been  so  excessively  discreet, 
when  all  concerned  had  long  been  dead.  Perhaps  Mrs. 
Gray  exaggerated  a  little,  and  perhaps  also  the  vileness 
of  her  husband's  behaviour  in  1735  made  her  forget  that 
in  earlier  years  they  had  lived  on  gentler  terms.  At  all 
events,  the  money -scrivener  is  shown  to  have  been  miserly, 
violent,  and,  as  I  have  before  conjectured,  probably  half- 
insane.  The  interesting  point  in  the  whole  story  is  Mrs. 
Gray's  self-sacrifice  for  her  son,  a  devotion  which  he  in 
his  turn  repaid  with  passionate  attachment,  and  remem- 
bered with  tender  effusion  to  the  day  of  his  death.  He 
inherited  from  his  mother  his  power  of  endurance,  his 
quiet  rectitude,  his  capacity  for  suffering  in  silence,  and 
the  singular  tenacity  of  his  affections. 

Gray,  Ashton,  and  Horace  Walpole  were  at  Cambridge 
together  as  undergraduates  from  the  spring  of  1735  until 
the  winter  of  1738.  They  associated  very  much  with  one 
another,  and  Walpole  shone  rather  less,  it  would  appear, 
than  at  any  other  part  of  his  life.  The  following  extract 
of  a  letter  from  Walpole  to  West,  dated  November  9, 1735, 
is  particularly  valuable : 

"  Tydcus  rose  and  set  at  Eton.  He  is  only  known  here  to  be  a 
scholar  of  King's.  Orosmades  and  Almanzor  are  just  the  same ; 
that  is,  I  am  almost  the  only  person  they  are  acquainted  with, 
and  consequently  the  only  person  acquainted  with  their  excellences. 
Plato  improves  every  day ;  so  does  my  friendship  with  him.  These 
three  divide  my  whole  time,  though  I  believe  you  will  guess  there  is 
no  quadruple  alliance ;  that  is  a  happiness  which  I  only  enjoyed  when 
you  was  at  Eton." 


i.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  11 

The  nickname  which  gives  us  least  difficulty  here  is 
that  in  which  we  are  most  interested.  Orosmades  was 
West's  name  for  Gray,  because  he  was  such  a  chilly 
mortal,  and  worshipped  the  sun.  West  himself  was  known 
as  Favonius.  Tydeus  is  very  clearly  Walpole  himself, 
and  Almanzor  is  probably  Ashton.  I  would  hazard  the 
conjecture  that  Plato  is  Henry  Coventry,  a  young  man 
then  making  some  stir  in  the  University  with  certain 
semi-religious  Dialogues.  He  was  a  friend  of  Ashton's, 
and  produced  on  Horace  Walpole  a  very  startling  im- 
pression, causing  in  that  volatile  creature  for  the  first  and 
only  time  an  access  of  fervent  piety,  during  which  Horace 
actually  went  to  read  the  Bible  to  the  prisoners  in  the 
Castle  gaol.  Very  soon  this  wore  off,  and  Coventry  him- 
self became  a  free-thinker,  but  Ashton  remained  serious, 
and  taking  orders  very  early,  dropped  out  of  the  circle  of 
friends.  In  all  this  the  name  of  Gray  is  not  mentioned, 
but  one  is  justified  in  believing  that  he  did  not  join  the 
reading-parties  at  the  Castle. 

Early  in  1736  the  three  Cambridge  undergraduates  ap- 
peared in  print  simultaneously  and  for  the  first  time  in  a 
folio  collection  of  Latin  Hymeneals  on  the  marriage  of 
Frederic,  Prince  of  Wales.  Of  these  effusions,  Gray's 
copy  of  hexameters  is  by  far  the  best,  and  was  so  recog- 
nized from  the  first.  Mason  has  thought  it  necessary  to 
make  a  curious  apology  for  this  poem,  and  says  that  Gray 
"ought  to  have  been  above  prostituting  his  powers"  in 
"  adulatory  verses  of  this  kind."  But  if  he  had  glanced 
through  the  lines  again,  of  which  he  must  have  been 
speaking  from  memory,  Mason  would  have  seen  that  they 
contain  no  more  fulsome  compliments  than  were  abso- 
lutely needful  on  the  occasion.  The  young  poet  is  not 
thinking  at  all  about  their  royal  highnesses,  but  a  great 


12  GRAY.  [chap. 

deal  about  his  own  fine  language,  and  is  very  innocent 
of  anything  like  adulation.  The  verses  themselves  do 
not  show  much  progress;  there  is  a  fine  passage  at  the 
end,  but  it  is  almost  a  cento  from  Ovid.  One  line,  mel- 
ancholy to  relate,  does  not  scan.  In  every  way  superior 
to  the  Hymeneal  is  Luna  Habitabilis,  a  poem  in  nearly 
one  hundred  verses,  written  by  desire  of  the  College  in 
1737,  and  printed  in  the  Musce  Etonenses.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  lay  any  stress  on  these  official  productions,  mere 
exercises  on  a  given  text.  At  Pembroke,  both  in  the 
library  of  the  College,  and  in  the  Stonehewer  MSS.  at 
the  Master's  lodge,  I  have  examined  a  number  of  similar 
pieces,  in  prose  and  verse,  copied  in  a  round,  youthful 
handwriting,  and  signed  "  Gray."  Among  them  a  copy 
of  elegiacs,  on  the  5th  of  November,  struck  me  as  particu- 
larly clever,  and  it  might  be  well,  as  the  body  of  Gray's 
works  is  so  small,  and  his  Latin  verse  so  admirable,  to 
include  several  of  these  in  a  complete  edition  of  his  writ- 
ings.    They  do  not,  however,  greatly  concern  us  here. 

As  early  as  May,  1736,  it  is  curious  to  find  the  dulness 
of  Cambridge  already  lying  with  a  leaden  weight  on  the 
nerves  and  energies  of  Gray,  a  youth  scarcely  in  his  twen- 
tieth year.  In  his  letters  to  West  he  strikes  exactly  the 
same  note  that  he  harped  upon  ten  years  later  to  Whar- 
ton, twenty  years  later  to  Mason,  thirty  years  later  to 
Norton  Nichols,  and  in  his  last  months,  with  more  shrill 
insistence  than  ever,  to  Bonstetten.  The  cloud  sank  early 
upon  his  spirits.  He  writes  to  West :  "  When  we  meet 
it  will  be  my  greatest  of  pleasures  to  know  what  you  do, 
what  you  read,  and  how  you  spend  your  time,  and  to  tell 
you  what  I  do  not  read,  and  how  I  do  not,  <fec,  for  almost 
all  the  employment  of  my  hours  may  he  best  explained  by 
negatives ;  take  my  word  and  experience  upon   it,  doing 


i]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  18 

nothing  is  a  most  amusing  business ;  and  yet  neither  some- 
thing nor  nothing  gives  me  any  pleasure.  When  you  have 
seen  one  of  my  days,  you  have  seen  a  whole  year  of  my 
life ;  they  go  round  and  round  like  the  blind  horse  in  the 
mill,  only  he  has  the  satisfaction  of  fancying  he  makes  a 
progress  and  gets  some  ground ;  ray  eyes  are  open  enough 
to  see  the  same  dull  prospect,  and  to  know  that,  having 
made  four-and-twcnty  steps  more,  I  shall  be  just  where  I 
was."  This  is  the  real  Gray  speaking  to  us  for  the  first 
time,  and  after  a  few  more  playful  phrases  he  turns  again, 
and  gives  us  another  phase  of  his  character.  "  You  need 
not  doubt,  therefore,  of  having  a  first  row  in  the  front  box 
of  my  little  heart,  and  I  believe  you  are  not  in  danger  of  be- 
ing crowded  there  ;  it  is  asking  you  to  an  old  play,  indeed, 
but  you  will  be  candid  enough  to  excuse  the  whole  piece 
for  the  sake  of  a  few  tolerable  lines."  Many  clever  and 
delicate  boys  think  it  effective  to  pose  as  victims  to  mel- 
ancholy, and  the  former  of  these  passages  would  possess 
no  importance  if  it  were  not  for  its  relation  to  the  poet's 
later  expressions.  He  never  henceforward  habitually  rose 
above  this  deadly  dulness  of  the  spirits.  His  melancholy 
was  passive  and  under  control,  not  acute  and  rebellious, 
like  that  of  Cowpcr,  but  it  was  almost  more  enduring.  It 
is  probable  that  with  judicious  medical  treatment  it  might 
have  been  removed,  or  so  far  relieved  as  to  be  harmless. 
But  it  was  not  the  habit  of  men  in  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  take  any  rational  care  of  their 
health.  Men  who  lived  in  the  country,  and  did  not  hunt, 
took  no  exercise  at  all.  The  constitution  of  the  genera- 
tion was  suffering  from  the  mad  frolics  of  the  preceding 
age,  and  almost  everybody  had  a  touch  of  gout  or  scurvy. 
Nothing  was  more  frequent  than  for  men,  in  apparently 
robust  health,  to  break  down  suddenly,  at  all  points,  in 


14  GRAY.  [chap 

early  middle  life.  People  were  not  in  the  least  surprised 
when  men  like  Garth  and  Fenton  died  of  mere  indolence, 
because  they  had  become  prematurely  corpulent  and  could 
not  be  persuaded  to  get  out  of  bed.  Swift,  Thomson, 
and  Gray  are  illustrious  examples  of  the  neglect  of  all 
hygienic  precaution  among  quiet  middle-class  people  in 
the  early  decades  of  the  century.  Gray  took  no  exercise 
whatever ;  Cole  reports  that  he  said  at  the  end  of  his  life 
that  he  had  never  thrown  his  leg  across  the  back  of  a 
horse,  and  this  was  really  a  very  extraordinary  confession 
for  a  man  to  make  in  those  days.  But  we  shall  have  to 
return  to  the  subject  of  Gray's  melancholy,  and  we  need 
not  dwell  upon  it  here,  further  than  to  note  that  it  began 
at  least  with  his  undergraduatejlays.  He  was  considered 
effeminate  at  college,  butThe  only  proof  of  this  that  is 
given  to  us  is  one  with  which  the  most  robust  modern 
reader  must  sympathise,  namely,  that  he  drank  tea  for 
breakfast,  whilst  all  the  rest  of  the  university,  except 
Horace  Walpole,  drank  beer. 

The  letter  from  which  we  have  just  quoted  goes  on  to 
show  that  the  idleness  of  his  life  existed  only  in  his  im- 
agination. He  was,  in  fact,  at  this  time  wandering  at  will 
along  the  less-trodden  paths  of  Latin  literature,  and  rap- 
idly laying  the  foundation  of  his  unequalled  acquaintance 
with  the  classics.  He  is  now  reading  Statius,  he  tells 
West,  and  he  encloses  a  translation  of  about  one  hundred 
and  ten  lines  from  the  sixth  book  of  the  Thebaid.  This 
is  the  first  example  of  his  English  verse  which  has  been 
preserved.  It  is  very  interesting,  as  showing  already  the 
happy  instinct  which  led  Gray  to  reject  the  mode  of  Pope 
in  favour  of  the  more  massive  and  sonorous  verse  svstem 
of  Dryden.  He  treats  the  heroic  couplet  with  great  skill, 
but  in  close  discipleship  of  the  latter  master  in  his  Fables. 


i.j  CHILDHOOD  AXD  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  15 

To  a  trained  car,  after  much  study  of  minor  English  verse 
written  between  1720  and  1740,  these  couplets  have  al- 
most an  archaic  sound,  so  thoroughly  are  they  out  of 
keeping  with  the  glib,  satiric  poetry  of  the  period.  Pope 
was  a  splendid  artificer  of  verse,  but  there  was  so  much  of 
pure  intellect,  and  of  personal  temperament,  in  the  con- 
duct of  his  art,  that  he  could  not  pass  on  his  secret  to  his 
pupils,  and  in  the  hands  of  his  direct  imitators  the  heroic 
couplet  lost  every  charm  but  that  of  mere  sparkling  prog- 
ress. The  verse  of  such  people  as  Whitehead  had  be- 
come a  simple  voluntary  upon  knitting-needles.  Gray 
saw  the  necessity  of  bringing  back  melody  and  volume  to 
the  heroic  line,  and  very  soon  the  practice  of  the  day  dis- 
gusted him,  as  we  shall  see,  with  the  couplet  altogether. 
For  the  present  he  was  learning  the  principles  of  his  art 
at  the  feet  of  Dryden.  West  was  delighted  with  the 
translation,  and  compared  Gray  contending  with  Statins 
to  Apollo  wrestling  with  Hyacinth.  In  a  less  hyperboli- 
cal spirit,  he  pointed  out,  very  justly,  the  excellent  render- 
ing of  that  peculiarly  Statian  phrase,  Summos  auro  man- 
sueverat  ungues,  by 

"  And  calm'd  the  terrors  of  his  claws  in  gold." 

We  find  from  Walpole  that  Gray  spent  his  vacations  in 
August,  1736,  at  his  uncle's  house  at  Burnham,  in  Buck- 
inghamshire ;  and  here  he  was  close  to  the  scene  of  so 
many  of  his  later  experiences,  the  sylvan  parish  of  Stoke- 
Pogis.  For  the  present,  however,  all  we  hear  is  that  ho 
is  too  lazy  to  go  over  to  Eton,  which  the  enthusiastic 
Walpole  and  West  consider  to  be  perfectly  unpardonable. 
A  year  later  he  is  again  with  his  uncle  at  Burnham;  and 
it  is  on  this  occasion  that  he  discovers  the  since-famous 
beeches.  He  is  writing  to  Horace  Walpole,  and  he  says : 
2 


16  GRAY.  [chap. 

"  My  uncle  is  a  great  hunter  in  imagination ;  his  dogs  take  up 
every  chair  in  the  house,  so  I  am  forced  to  stand  at  the  present  writ- 
ing; and  though  the  gout  forbids  him  galloping  after  them  in  the 
field,  yet  he  continues  still  to  regale  his  ears  and  nose  with  their  com- 
fortable noise  and  stink.  He  holds  me  mighty  cheap,  I  perceive,  for 
walking  when  I  should  ride,  and  reading  when  I  should  hunt.  My 
comfort  amidst  all  this  is,  that  I  have  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile, 
through  a  green  lane,  a  forest  (the  vulgar  call  it  a  common),  all  my 
own,  at  least,  as  good  as  so,  for  I  spy  no  human  thing  in  it  but  my- 
self. It  is  a  little  chaos  of  mountains  and  precipices ;  mountains,  it 
is  true,  that  do  not  ascend  much  above  the  clouds,  nor  are  the  de- 
clivities quite  so  amazing  as  Dover  Cliff ;  but  just  such  hills  as  peo- 
ple who  love  their  necks  as  well  as  I  do  may  venture  to  climb,  and 
crags  that  give  the  eye  as  much  pleasure  as  if  they  were  more  dan- 
gerous. Both  vale  and  hill  are  covered  with  most  venerable  beeches, 
and  other  very  reverend  vegetables,  that,  like  most  other  ancient  peo- 
ple, are  always  dreaming  out  their  old  stories  to  the  winds.  At  the 
foot  of  one  of  these  squats  ME  (il  pcnseroso),  and  there  I  grow  to 
the  trunk  for  a  whole  morning.  The  timorous  hare  and  sportive 
squirrel  gambol  around  me  like  Adam  in  Paradise  before  he  had  an 
Eve;  but  I  think  he  did  not  use  to  read  Virgil,  as  I  commonly  do." 

This  is  the  first  expression,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  of  the 
modern  feeling  of  the  picturesque.  We  shall  see  that  it 
became  more  and  more  a  characteristic  impulse  with 
Gray  as  years  went  by.  In  this  letter,  too,  we  see  that 
at  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  had  already  not  a  little 
of  that  sprightly  wit  and  variety  of  manner  which  make 
him  one  of  the  most  delightful  letter-writers  in  any  litera- 
ture. 

At  Burnham,  in  1737,  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  a 
very  interesting  waif  of  the  preceding  century.  Thomas 
Southerne,  the  once  famous  author  of  Oroonoko  and  The 
Fatal  Marriage,  the  last  survivor  of  the  age  of  Dryden,  was 
visiting  a  gentleman  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Burnham, 
and  was  so  much  pleased  with  young  Gray  that  though  he 


j.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  17 

was  seventy-seven  years  of  age  he  often  came  over  to  the 
house  of  Mr.  Antrobus  to  see  him.  Still  oftener,  without 
doubt,  the  young  poet  went  to  see  the  veteran,  whose  sue* 
cesses  on  the  stage  of  the  Restoration  took  him  back  fifty 
years  to  a  society  very  different  from  that  in  which  he  now 
vegetated  on  the  ample  fortune  which  his  tragedies  still 
brought  him  in.  Unhappily,  his  memory  was  almost  en- 
tirely gone,  though  he  lived  nine  years  more,  and  died  of 
sheer  old  age  on  the  borders  of  ninety ;  so  that  Gray's 
curiosity  about  Dryden,  and  the  other  poets  his  friends, 
was  more  provoked  than  gratified.  However,  Gray  found 
him  as  agreeable  an  old  man  as  could  be,  and  liked  "  to 
look  at  him  and  think  of  Isabella  and  Oroonoko,"  those 
personages  then  still  being  typical  of  romantic  disappoint- 
ment and  picturesque  sensibility.  About  this  time,  more- 
over, we  may  just  note  in  passing,  died  Matthew  Green, 
whose  posthumous  poem  of  The  Spleen  was  to  exercise  a 
considerable  influence  over  Gray,  and  to  be  one  of  the 
few  contemporary  poems  which  he  was  able  fervidly  to 
admire. 

Lest,  however,  the  boy  should  seem  too  serious  and  pre- 
cocious, if  we  know  him  only  by  the  scholarly  letters  to 
West,  let  us  print  here,  for  the  first  time,  a  note  to  his 
tutor,  the  Rev.  George  Birkett,  Fellow  of  Peterhouse,  a 
note  which  throws  an  interesting  light  on  his  manners. 
The  postmark  of  this  letter,  which  has  lately  been  discov- 
ered at  Pembroke  College,  is  October  8,  the  year,  I  think, 
1736: 

"  Sr-, — As  I  shall  stay  only  a  fortnight  longer  in  town,  I'll  beg  you 
to  give  yourself  the  trouble  of  writing  out  my  Bills,  and  sending  'em, 
that  I  may  put  myself  out  of  your  Debt,  as  soon  as  I  come  down : 
if  Piazza  should  come  to  you,  you'll  be  so  good  as  to  satisfie  him  : 
I  protest,  I  forget  what  I  owe  him,  but  he  is  honest  enough  to  tell 


li  GRAY.  [chap. 

you  right.     My  Father  and  Mother  desire  me  to  send  their  compli- 
ments, and  I  beg  you'd  believe  me 

"Sr-,  your  most  obed'-  humble  Serv'- 

"T.  Gray." 

The  amusing  point  is  that  the  tutor  seems  to  have  flown 
into  a  rage  at  the  pert  tone  of  this  epistle,  and  we  have  the 
rough  draft  of  two  replies  on  the  fly-sheet.  The  first  ad- 
dresses him  as  "  pretty  Mr.  Gray,"  and  is  a  moral  box  on 
the  ear;  but  this  has  been  cancelled,  as  wrath  gave  way  to 
discretion,  and  the  final  answer  is  very  friendly,  and  states 
that  the  writer  would  do  anything  "  for  your  father  and 
your  uncle,  Mr.  Antrobus  (Thos.)."  Signor  Piazza  was 
the  Italian  master  to  the  University,  and  six  months  later 
we  find  Gray,  and  apparently  Horace  Walpole  also,  learn- 
ing Italian  "  like  any  dragon."  The  course  of  study  habit- 
ual at  the  University  was  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with 
Gray's  instinctive  movements  after  knowledge.  He  com- 
plains bitterly  of  having  to  endure  lectures  daily  and  hour- 
ly, and  of  having  to  waste  his  time  over  mathematics, 
where  his  teacher  was  the  celebrated  Professor  Nicholas 
Saunderson,  whose  masterly  Elements  of  Algebra,  after- 
wards the  text-books  of  the  University,  were  still  known 
only  by  oral  tradition.  For  such  learning  Gray  had  neither 
taste  nor  patience.  "  It  is  very  possible,"  he  writes  to  West, 
"  that  two  and  two  make  four,  but  I  would  not  give  four 
farthings  to  demonstrate  this  ever  so  clearly ;  and  if  these 
be  the  profits  of  life,  give  me  the  amusements  of  it."  His 
account  of  the  low  condition  of  classic  learning  at  Cam- 
bridge we  must  take  with  a  grain  of  salt.  As  an  under- 
graduate he  would  of  course  see  nothing  of  the  great  lights 
of  the  University,  now  sinking  beneath  the  horizon ;  such 
a  shy  lad  as  he  would  not  be  asked  to  share  the  conversa- 
tion of  Bentley,  or  Snape,  or  the  venerable  Master  of  Jesus. 


I.]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  19 

What  docs  seem  clear,  from  his  repeated  denunciations  of 
"  that  pretty  collection  of  desolate  animals "  called  Cam- 
bridge, is  that  classical  taste  was  at  a  very  low  ebb  among 
the  junior  fellows  and  the  elder  undergraduates.  The  age 
of  the  great  Latinists  had  passed  away ;  the  Greek  revival, 
which  Gray  did  much  to  start,  had  not  begun,  and  1737 
was  certainly  a  dull  year  at  the  University.  It  seems  that 
there  were  no  Greek  text-books  for  the  use  of  schools  until 
1741,  and  the  method  of  pronouncing  that  language  was 
as  depraved  as  possible.  A  few  hackneyed  extracts  from 
Homer  and  Hesiod  were  all  that  a  youth  was  required  to 
have  read  in  order  to  pass  his  examination.  Plato  and 
Aristotle  were  almost  unknown,  and  Gray  himself  seems 
to  have  been  the  only  person  at  Cambridge  who  attempted 
seriously  to  write  Greek  verse.  It  is  not  difficult  to  un- 
derstand that  when,  with  the  third  term  of  his  second  year, 
his  small  opportunities  of  classical  reading  were  taken  from 
him,  and  he  saw  himself  descend  into  the  Cimmerian  dark- 
ness of  undiluted  mathematics,  the  heart  of  the  young  poet 
sank  within  him.  In  December,  1736,  there  was  an  attempt 
at  rebellion ;  he  declined  to  take  degrees,  and  announced 
his  intention  of  quitting  college,  but  as  we  hear  no  more 
of  this,  and  as  he  stayed  two  years  longer  at  Cambridge, 
we  may  believe  that  this  was  overruled. 

Meanwhile  the  leaden  rod  seemed  to  rale  the  fate  of  the 
quadruple  alliance.  West  grew  worse  and  worse,  hope- 
lessly entangled  in  consumptive  symptoms.  Walpole  lost 
his  mother  in  August  of  1737,  and  after  this  was  a  kind 
of  waif  and  stray  until  he  finally  left  England  in  1739. 
Gray,  whether  in  Cambridge  or  London,  reverts  more  and 
more  constantly  to  his  melancholy.  "  Low  spirits  are  my 
true  and  faithful  companions ;  they  get  up  with  me,  go 
to  bed  with  me,  make  journeys  and  returns  as  I  do ;  nay, 


20  GRAY.  [chap. 

and  pay  visits,  and  will  even  affect  to  be  jocose,  and  force 
a  feeble  laugb  with 'me;  but  most  commonly  we  sit  to- 
gether, and  are  the  prettiest  insipid  company  in  the  world. 
However,  when  you  come,"  he  writes  to  West,  "  I  believe 
they  must  undergo  the  fate  of  all  humble  companions,  and 
be  discarded.     Would  I  could  turn  them  to  the  same  use 
that  you  have  done,  and  make  an  Apollo  of  them.    If  they 
could  write  such  verses  with  me,  not  hartshorn,  nor  spirit 
of  amber,  nor  all  that  furnishes  the  closet  of  the  apothe- 
cary's wisdom,  should  persuade  me  to  part  with  them." 
For  West  had  been  writing  a  touching  eulogy  ad  amicos, 
in  the  manner  of  Tibullus,  inspired  by  real  feeling  and  a 
sad  presentiment  of  the  death  that  lay  five  years  ahead. 
In  reading  these  lines  of  Gray's  we  hardly  know  whether 
most  to  admire  the  marvellous  lightness  and  charm  of  the 
style,  or  to  be  concerned  at  such  confession  of  want  of 
spirits  in  a  lad  of  twenty-one.     His  letters,  however,  when 
they  could  be  wrung  out  of  his  apathy,  were  precious  to 
poor  West  at  Oxford :  "  I  find  no  physic  comparable  to 
your  letters :  prescribe  to  me,  dear  Gray,  as  often  and  as 
much  as  you  think  proper,"  and  the  amiable  young  ped- 
ants proceed,  as  before,  to  the  analysis  of  Poseidippos, 
and  Lucretius,  and  such  like  frivolous  reading.     One  of 
West's  letters  contains  a  piece  of  highly  practical  advice : 
"  Indulge,  amabo   tc,  plusquam   soles,  corporis   exercita- 
tionibus,"  but  bodily  exercise  was  just  what  Gray  declined 
to  indulge  in  to  the  end  of  his  life.     He  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  even  a  walker ;  in-doors  he  was  a  bookworm, 
and  out-of-doors  a  saunterer  and  a  dreamer ;  nor  was  there 
ever,  it  would  seem,  a  " good  friend  Matthew"  to  urge  the 
too  pensive  student  out  into  the  light  of  common  life. 

Certain  interesting  poetical  exercises  mark  the  close  of 
Gray's  undergraduate  career.     A  Latin  ode  in  Sapphics 


t]  CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  COLLEGE  LIFE.  21 

and  a  fragment  in  Alcaics  were  sent  in  June,  1738,  to 
West,  who  bad  just  left  Oxford  for  the  Inner  Temple. 
The  second  of  these,  which  is  so  brief  that  it  may  surely 
be  quoted  here — 

"  0  lacrymarum  fons,  tenero  sacros 
Ducentiuni  ortus  ex  animo  ;  quater 
Felix !  in  imo  qui  scatentem 
Pectore  te,  pia  Nympha,  sensit " — 

has  called  forth  high  eulogy  from  scholars  of  every  suc- 
ceeding generation.  It  is  in  such  tiny  seed-pearl  of  song 
as  this  that  we  find  the  very  quintessence  of  Gray's  pecul- 
iar grace  and  delicacy.  To  July,  1737,  belongs  a  version 
into  English  heroics  of  a  long  passage  from  Propertius, 
beginning — 

"  Now  prostrate,  Bacchus,  at  thy  shrine  I  bend  " — 

which  I  have  not  met  with  in  print;  and  another  piece 
from  the  same  poet,  beginning  "  Long  as  of  youth,"  which 
occurs  in  all  the  editions  of  Gray,  bears  on  the  original 
MS.  at  Pembroke  the  date  December,  1738.  It  may  be  re- 
marked that  in  the  printed  copies  the  last  two  lines — 

"  You  whose  young  bosoms  feel  a  nobler  flame, 
Redeem  what  Crassus  lost  and  vindicate  his  name  " — 

have  accidentally  dropped  out.  In  September,  1738,  Gray 
left  Cambridge,  and  took  up  his  abode  in  his  father's  house 
for  six  months,  apparently  with  no  definite  plans  regarding 
his  own  future  career ;  but  out  of  this  sleepy  condition  of 
mind  he  was  suddenly  waked  by  Horace  Walpole's  prop- 
osition that  they  should  start  together  on  the  grand  tour. 
The  offer  was  a  generous  one.  Walpole  was  to  pay  all 
Gray's  expenses,  but  Gray  was  to  be  absolutely  indepen- 


22  GRAY.  [chap.  i. 

dent :  there  was  no  talk  of  the  poet's  accompanying  his 
younger  friend  in  any  secondary  capacity,  and  it  is  only 
fair  to  Horace  "Walpole  to  state  that  he  seems  to  have 
acted  in  a  thoroughly  kind  and  gentlemanly  spirit.  "What 
was  still  more  remarkable  was  that,  without  letting  Gray 
know,  he  made  out  his  will  before  starting,  and  so  arranged 
that,  had  he  died  whilst  abroad,  Gray  would  have  been  his 
sole  legatee.  The  frivolities  of  Horace  Walpole  have  been 
dissected  with  the  most  cruel  frankness ;  it  is  surely  only 
just  to  point  out  that  in  this  instance  he  acted  a  very 
gracious  and  affectionate  part.  On  the  29th  of  March, 
1739,  the  two  friends  started  from  Dover. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE     GRAND     TOUR. 

Gray  was  only  out  of  his  native  country  once,  but  tbat 
single  visit  to  the  Continent  lasted  for  nearly  three  years, 
and  produced  a  very  deep  impression  upon  his  character. 
It  is  difficult  to  realize  what  he  would  have  become  with- 
out this  stimulus  to  the  animal  and  external  part  of  his 
nature.  He  was  in  danger  of  settling  down  in  a  species 
of  moral  inertia,  of  becoming  dull  and  torpid,  of  spoiling 
a  great  poet  to  make  a  little  pedant.  The  happy  frivoli- 
ties of  France  and  Italy,  though  they  were  powerless  over 
the  deep  springs  of  his  being,  stirred  the  surface  of  it, 
and  made  him  bright  and  human.  It  is  to  be  noticed 
that  we  hear  nothing  of  his  "true  and  faithful  companion, 
melancholy,"  whilst  he  is  away  in  the  South ;  he  was  cheer- 
fully occupied,  taken  out  of  himself,  and  serene  in  the 
gaiety  of  others.  The  two  friends  enjoyed  a  very  rough 
passage  from  Dover  to  Calais,  and  on  landing  Gray  antic- 
ipated Dr.  Johnson  by  being  surprised  that  the  inhabitants 
of  the  country  could  speak  French  so  well.  He  also  dis- 
covered that  they  were  all  "  Papishes,"  and  briskly  adapted 
himself  to  the  custom  of  the  land  by  attending  high-mass 
the  next  day,  which  happened  to  be  Easter  Monday.  In 
the  afternoon  the  companions  set  out  through  a  snow- 
storm for  Boulogne  in  a  post-chaise,  a  conveyance — not 
C     2*  26 


24  GRAY.  [chap. 

then  imported  into  England — which  filled  the  young  men 
with  hilarious  amazement.  Walpole,  sensibly  suggesting 
that  there  was  no  cause  for  hurry,  refused  to  be  driven 
express  to  Paris;  and  so  they  loitered  very  agreeably 
through  Picardy,  stopping  at  Montreuil,  Abbeville,  and 
Amiens.  From  the  latter  city  Gray  wrote  an  amusing 
account  of  his  journey  to  his  mother,  containing  a  lively 
description  of  French  scenery.  "The  country  we  have 
passed  through  hitherto  has  been  flat,  open,  but  agreeably 
diversified  with  villages,  fields  well  cultivated,  and  little 
rivers.  On  every  hillock  is  a  windmill,  a  crucifix,  or  a 
Virgin  Mary  dressed  in  flowers  and  a  sarcenet  robe ;  one 
sees  not  many  people  or  carriages  on  the  road.  Now  and 
then  indeed  you  meet  a  strolling  friar,  a  countryman  with 
his  great  muff,  or  a  woman  riding  astride  on  a  little  ass, 
with  short  petticoats,  and  a  great  head-dress  of  blue  wool." 
On  the  9th  of  April,  rather  late  on  a  Saturday  evening, 
they  rolled  into  Paris,  and  after  a  bewildering  drive  drew 
up  at  last  at  the  lodgings  which  had  been  prepared  for 
them,  probably  in  or  near  the  British  Embassy,  and  found 
themselves  warmly  welcomed  by  "Walpole's  cousins,  the 
Conways,  and  by  Lord  Holdernesse.  These  young  men 
were  already  in  the  thick  of  the  gay  Parisian  tumult,  and 
introduced  Walpole  and  Gray  also,  as  his  friend,  to  the 
best  society.  The  very  day  after  their  arrival  they  dined 
at  Lord  Holdernesse's  to  meet  the  Abbe  Prevot-d'Exiles, 
author  of  that  masterpiece  of  passion, Manon  Lescaut,  and 
now  in  his  forty-second  year.  It  is  very  much  to  be  de- 
plored that  we  do  not  possess  in  any  form  Gray's  impres- 
sions of  the  illustrious  Frenchmen  with  whom  he  came 
into  habitual  contact  during  the  next  two  months.  He 
merely  mentions  the  famous  comic  actress,  Mademoiselle 
Jeanne  Quinault  "  la  Cadette,"  who  was  even  then,  though 


n.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  25 

in  the  flower  of  her  years,  coquettishly  threatening  to 
leave  the  stage,  and  who  did  actually  retire,  amidst  the  re- 
grets of  a  whole  city,  before  Gray  came  back  to  England. 
She  reminded  the  young  Englishman  of  Mrs.  Clive,  the 
actress,  but  he  says  nothing  of  those  famous  Sunday  sup- 
pers at  which  she  presided,  and  at  which  all  that  was  witty 
and  brilliant  in  Paris  was  rehearsed  or  invented.  These 
meetings,  afterwards  developed  into  the  sessions  of  the 
Societe  du  Bout  du  Banc,  were  then  only  in  their  infancy ; 
yet  there,  from  his  corner  unobserved,  the  little  English 
poet  must  have  keenly  noted  many  celebrities  of  the  hour, 
whose  laurels  were  destined  to  wither  when  his  were  only 
beginning  to  sprout.  There  would  be  found  the  "  most 
cruel  of  amateurs,"  the  Comte  de  Caylus ;  Voisenon,  still 
in  the  flush  of  his  reputation ;  Moncrif,  the  lover  of  cats, 
with  his  strange  dog-face;  and  there  or  elsewhere  wo 
know  that  Gray  met  and  admired  that  prince  of  frivolous 
ingenuities,  the  redoubtable  Marivaux.  But  of  all  this  his 
letters  tell  us  nothing — nothing  even  of  the  most  curious 
of  his  friendships,  that  with  Crebillon  fils,  who,  according 
to  Walpole,  was  their  constant  companion  during  their 
stay  in  Paris. 

All  the  critics  of  Gray  have  found  it  necessary  to  excuse 
or  explain  away  that  remarkable  statement  of  his,  that  "  as 
the  paradisaical  pleasures  of  the  Mahometans  consist  in 
playing  upon  the  flute,  etc.,  be  mine  to  read  eternal  new 
romances  of  Marivaux  and  Crebillon."  Mason  considered 
this  very  whimsical,  and  later  editors  have  hoped  that  it 
meant  nothing  at  all.  But  Gray  was  not  a  man  to  say 
what  he  did  not  mean,  even  in  jest.  Such  a  reasonable 
and  unprejudiced  mind  as  his  may  be  credited  with  a 
meaning,  however  paradoxical  the  statement  it  makes.  It 
is  quite  certain,  from  various  remarks  scattered  through  his 


26  GRAY.  [chap. 

correspondence,  that  the  literature  of  the  French  Regency, 
the  boudoir  poems  and  novels  of  the  alcove,  gave  him  more 
pleasure  than  any  other  form  of  contemporary  literature. 
He  uses  language,  in  speaking  of  Gresset,  the  author  of 
Vert-Vert,  which  contrasts  curiously  with  his  coldness  to- 
wards Sterne  and  Collins.  But,  above  all,  he  delighted  in 
Crebillon.  Hardly  had  he  arrived  in  Paris,  than  he  sent 
West  the  Lettres  de  la  Marquise  M*  *  *  au  Cornte  de 
R  *  *  *,  which  had  been  published  in  1*732,  but  which  the 
success  of  Tanzai  et  Neardane  had  pushed  into  a  new 
edition.  The  younger  Crebillon  at  this  time  was  in  his 
thirty-second  year,  discreet,  confident,  the  friend  of  every 
one,  the  best  company  in  Paris ;  half  his  time  spent  in 
wandering  over  the  cheerful  city  that  he  loved  so  much, 
the  other  half  given  to  literature  in  the  company  of  that 
strange  colossus,  his  father,  the  tragic  poet,  the  writing- 
room  of  this  odd  couple  being  shared  with  a  menagerie  of 
cats  and  dogs  and  queer  feathered  folk.  Always  a  ser- 
viceable creature,  and  perhaps  even  already  possessed  with 
something  of  that  Anglomania  which  led  him  at  last  into 
a  sort  of  morganatic  marriage  with  British  aristocracy, 
Crebillon  evidently  did  all  he  could  to  make  Walpole  and 
Gray  happy  in  Paris;  no  chaperon  could  be  more  fitting 
than  he  to  a  young  Englishman  desirous  of  threading  the 
mazes  of  that  rose-colored  Parisian  Arcadia  which  had 
survived  the  days  of  the  Regency,  and  had  not  yet  ceased 
to  look  on  Louis  XV.  as  the  Celadon  of  its  pastoral  valleys. 
It  was  a  charming  world  of  fancy  and  caprice ;  a  world 
of  milky  clouds  floating  in  an  infinite  azure,  and  bearing 
a  mundane  Venus  to  her  throne  on  a  Frenchified  Cithaeron. 
And  what  strange  figures  were  bound  to  the  golden  car ; 
generals,  and  abbes,  and  elderly  Academicians,  laughing 
philosophers  and  weeping  tragedians,  a  motley  crew  united 


ii]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  27 

in  the  universal  culte  du  Tendre,  gliding  down  a  stream  of 
elegance  and  cheerfulness  and  tolerance  that  was  by  no 
means  wholly  ignoble. 

All  this,  but  especially  the  elegance  and  the  tolerance, 
made  a  deep  impression  upon  the  spirit  of  Gray.  He 
came  from  a  Puritan  country ;  and  was  himself,  like  so 
many  of  our  greatest  men,  essentially  a  Puritan  at  heart ; 
but  he  was  too  acute  not  to  observe  where  English  prac- 
tice was  unsatisfactory.  Above  all,  he  seems  to  have  de- 
tected the  English  deficiency  in  style  and  grace ;  a  defi- 
ciency then,  in  1739,  far  more  marked  than  it  had  been 
half  a  century  earlier.  He  could  not  but  contrast  the 
young  English  squire,  that  engaging  and  florid  creature, 
with  the  bright,  sarcastic,  sympathetic  companion  of  his 
walks  in  Paris,  not  without  reflecting  that  the  healthier 
English  lad  was  almost  sure  to  develop  into  a  terrible 
type  of  fox-hunting  stupidity  in  middle  life.  He,  for  one, 
then,  and  to  the  end  of  his  days,  would  cast  in  his  lot 
with  what  was  refined  and  ingenious,  and  would  temper 
the  robustness  of  his  race  with  a  little  Gallic  brightness. 
Moreover,  his  taste  for  the  novels  of  Marivaux  and  Cre- 
billon,  with  their  ingenious  analysis  of  emotion,  their 
odour  of  musk  and  ambergris,  their  affectation  of  artless 
innocence,  and  their  quick  parry  of  wit,  was  not  without 
excuse  in  a  man  framed  as  Gray  was  for  the  more  brill- 
iant exercises  of  literature,  and  forced  to  feed,  in  his  own 
country,  if  he  must  read  romances  at  all,  on  the  coarse 
rubbish  of  Mrs.  Behn  or  Mrs.  Manley.  Curiously  enough, 
at  that  very  moment  Samuel  Richardson  was  preparing 
for  the  press  that  excellent  narrative  of  Pamela  which 
was  destined  to  found  a  great  modern  school  of  fiction  in 
England,  a  school  which  was  soon  to  sweep  into  contempt 
and   oblivion    all   the  "  crebillonaffe  -  amarivaude  "  which 


28  GRAY.  [chap. 

Gray  delighted  in,  a  contempt  so  general  that  one  stray 
reader  here  or  there  can  scarcely  venture  to  confess  that 
he  still  finds  the  Hasard  au  coin  du  Feu  very  pleasant 
and  innocent  reading.  We  shall  have  to  refer  once  again 
to  this  subject,  when  we  reach  the  humorous  poems  in 
which  Gray  introduced  into  English  literature  this  rococo 
manner. 

Gray  became  quite  a  little  fop  in  Paris.  He  complains 
that  the  French  tailor  has  covered  him  with  silk  and 
fringe,  and  has  widened  his  figure  with  buckram  a  yard 
on  either  side.  His  waistcoat  and  breeches  are  so  tight 
that  he  can  scarcely  breathe ;  he  ties  a  vast  solitaire 
around  his  neck,  wears  ruffles  at  his  fingers'  ends,  and 
sticks  his  two  arms  into  a  muff.  Thus  made  beautifully 
genteel,  he  and  Walpole  rolled  in  their  coach  to  the 
Comedy  and  the  Opera,  visited  Versailles  and  the  sights 
of  Paris,  attended  installations  and  spectacles,  and  saw  the 
best  of  all  that  was  to  be  seen.  Gray  was  absolutely  de- 
lighted with  his  new  existence.  "  I  could  entertain  myself 
this  month,"  he  wrote  to  West,  "  merely  with  the  com- 
mon streets  and  the  people  in  them ;"  and  Walpole,  who 
was  good-nature  itself  during  all  this  early  part  of  the 
tour,  insisted  on  sending  Gray  out  in  his  coach  to  see  all 
the  collections  of  fine  art,  and  other  such  sights  as  were 
not  congenial  to  himself,  since  Horace  Walpole  had  not 
yet  learned  to  be  a  connoisseur.  Gray  occupied  himself 
no  less  with  music,  and  his  letters  to  West  contain  some 
amusing  criticisms  of  French  opera.  The  performers,  he 
says,  "  come  in  and  sing  sentiment  in  lamentable  strains, 
neither  air  nor  recitation ;  only,  to  one's  great  joy,  they 
were  every  now  and  then  interrupted  by  a  dance,  or,  to 
one's  great  sorrow,  by  a  chorus  that  borders  the  stage 
from  one  end  to  the  other,  and  screams,  past  all  power  of 


n.j  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  29 

simile  to  represent Imagine,  I  say,  all  this  transact- 
ed by  cracked  voices,  trilling  divisions  upon  two  notes- 
and-a-lialf,  accompanied  by  an  orchestra  of  hnmstrums, 
and  a  whole  house  more  attentive  than  if  Farinclli  sung, 
and  yon  will  almost  have  formed  a  just  idea  of  the  thing." 
And  again,  later,  he  writes:  "  Des  mianlcmens  et  des  hcur- 
leincns  effroyables,  meles  avec  un  tintamarrc  du  diable— 
voila  la  musiquc  Franchise  en  abrege."  At  first  the 
weather  was  extremely  bad,  but  in  May  they  began  to 
enjoy  the  genial  climate;  they  took  long  excursions  to 
Versailles  and  Chantilly,  happy  "  to  walk  by  moonlight, 
and  hear  the  ladies  and  the  nightingales  sing." 

On  the  1st  of  June,  in  company  with  Henry  Conway, 
Walpole  and  Gray  left  Paris  and  settled  at  Rheims  for 
three  exquisite  summer  months.  I  fancy  that  these  were 
amongst  the  happiest  weeks  in  Gray's  life,  the  most  sunny 
and  unconcerned.  As  the  three  friends  came  with  par- 
ticular introductions  from  Lord  Conway,  who  knew 
Rheims  well,  they  were  welcomed  with  great  cordiality 
into  all  the  best  society  of  the  town.  Gray  found  the 
provincial  assemblies  very  stately  and  graceful,  but  with- 
out the  easy  familiarity  of  Parisian  manners.  The  mode 
of  entertainment  was  uniform,  beginning  with  cards,  in 
the  midst  of  which  every  one  rose  to  eat  what  was  called 
the  ffouter,  a  service  of  fruits,  cream,  sweetmeats,  crawfish, 
and  cheese.  People  then  sat  down  again  to  cards,  until 
they  had  played  forty  deals,  when  they  broke  up  into 
little  parties  for  a  promenade.  That  this  formality  was 
sometimes  set  aside  we  may  gather  from  a  very  little 
vignette  that  Gray  slips  into  a  letter  to  his  mother : 

"  The  other  evening  we  happened  to  be  got  together  in  a  company 
of  eighteen  people,  men  and  women  of  the  best  fashion  here,  at  a 
garden  in  the  town,  to  walk,  when  one  of  the  ladies  bethought  herself 


30  GRAY.  [chap. 

of  asking,  '  Why  should  we  not  sup  here  ?'  Immediately  the  cloth 
was  laid  by  the  side  of  a  fountain  under  the  trees,  and  a  very  elegant 
supper  served  up ;  after  which  another  said, '  Come,  let  us  sing,'  and 
directly  began  herself.  From  singing  we  insensibly  fell  to  dancing, 
and  singing  in  a  round  ;  when  somebody  mentioned  the  violins,  and 
immediately  a  company  of  them  was  ordered,  minuets  were  begun  in 
the  open  air,  and  then  came  country  dances,  which  held  till  four 
o'clock  next  morning ;  at  which  hour  the  gayest  lady  then  proposed 
that  such  as  were  weary  should  get  into  their  coaches,  and  the  rest 
of  them  should  dance  before  them  with  the  music  in  the  van ;  and  in 
this  manner  we  paraded  through  all  the  principal  streets  of  the  city, 
and  waked  everybody  in  it.  Mr.  Walpole  had  a  mind  to  make  a  cus- 
tom of  the  thing,  and  would  have  given  a  ball  in  the  same  manner 
next  week ;  but  the  women  did  not  come  into  it ;  so  I  believe  it  will 
drop,  and  they  will  return  to  their  dull  cards  and  usual  formalities." 

Walpole  intended  to  spend  the  winter  of  1739  in  the 
South  of  France,  and  was  therefore  not  unwilling  to  loiter 
by  the  way.  They  thought  to  stay  a  fortnight  at  Rheims, 
but  they  received  a  vague  intimation  that  Lord  Conway 
and  that  prince  of  idle  companions,  the  ever  -  sparkling 
George  Selwyn,  were  coming,  and  they  hung  on  for  three 
months  in  expectation  of  them.  At  last,  on  the  7th  of 
September,  they  left  Rheims,  and  entered  Dijon  three  days 
later.  The  capital  of  Burgundy,  with  its  rich  architecture 
and  treasuries  of  art,  made  Gray  regret  the  frivolous 
months  they  had  spent  at  Rheims,  whilst  Walpole,  who 
was  eager  to  set  off,  would  only  allow  him  three  or  four 
days  for  exploration.  On  the  18th  of  September  they 
were  at  Lyons,  and  this  town  became  their  head-quarters 
for  the  next  six  weeks.  The  junction  of  the  rivers  has 
provoked  a  multitude  of  conceits,  but  none  perhaps  so 
pretty  as  this  of  Gray's:  "The  Rhone  and  Saone  are  two 
people,  who,  though  of  tempers  extremely  unlike,  think  fit 
to  join  hands  here,  and  make  a  little  party  to  travel  to  the 


it]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  31 

Mediterranean  in  company;  the  lady  comes  gliding  along 
through  the  fruitful  plains  of  Burgundy,  incredibili  lenitate, 
ita  ut  oculis  in  utram  partem  fluit  judicari  non  j)ossit ;  the 
gentleman  runs  all  rough  and  roaring  down  from  the  moun- 
tains of  Switzerland  to  meet  her;  and  with  all  her  soft 
airs  she  likes  him  never  the  worse ;  she  goes  through  the 
middle  of  the  city  in  state,  and  he  passes  incog,  without 
the  walls,  but  waits  for  her  a  little  below." 

A  fortnight  later  the  friends  set  out  on  an  excursion 
across  the  mountains,  that  they  might  accompany  Henry 
Conway,  who  was  now  leaving  them,  as  far  as  Geneva. 
They  took  the  longest  road  through  Savoy,  that  they 
might  visit  the  Grande  Chartreuse,  which  impressed  Gray 
very  forcibly  by  the  solitary  grandeur  of  its  situation.  It 
was,  however,  not  on  this  occasion,  but  two  years  later, 
that  he  wrote  his  famous  Alcaic  Ode  in  the  album  of  the 
monastery.  The  friends  slept  as  the  guests  of  the  fathers, 
and  proceeded  next  day  to  Chambery,  which  greatly  dis- 
appointed them ;  and  sleeping  one  night  at  Aix-les-Bains, 
which  they  found  deserted,  and  another  at  Annecy,  they 
arrived  at  last  at  Geneva.  They  stayed  there  a  week, 
partly  to  see  Conway  settled,  and  partly  because  they 
found  it  very  bright  and  hospitable,  returning  at  last  to 
Lyons  through  the  spurs  of  the  Jura,  and  across  the  plains 
of  La  Bresse.  They  found  awaiting  them  a  letter  from 
Sir  Robert  Walpole,  in  which  he  desired  his  son  to  go  on 
to  Italy,  so  they  gladly  resigned  their  project  of  spending 
the  winter  in  France,  and  pushed  on  at  once  to  the  foot  of 
the  Alps ;  armed  against  the  cold  with  "  muffs,  hoods,  and 
masks  of  beaver,  fur  boots,  and  bearskins."  On  the  6th 
of  November  they  descended  into  Italy,  after  a  very  severe 
and  painful  journey  of  a  week's  duration,  through  two 
days  of  which  they  were  hardly  less  frightened  than  Addi- 


32  GRAY.  [phap. 

son  had  been  during  his  Alpine  adventures  a  generation 
earlier.  It  was  on  the  sixth  day  of  this  journey  that  the 
incident  occurred  which  was  so  graphically  described  both 
by  Gray  and  Walpole,  and  which  is  often  referred  to. 
Walpole  had  a  fat  little  black  spaniel,  called  Tory,  which 
he  was  very  fond  of;  and  as  this  pampered  creature  was 
trotting  beside  the  ascending  chaise,  enjoying  his  little 
constitutional,  a  young  wolf  sprung  out  of  the  covert  and 
snatched  the  shrieking  favourite  away  from  amongst  the 
carriages  and  servants  before  any  one  had  the  presence  of 
mind  to  draw  a  pistol.  Walpole  screamed  and  wept,  but 
Tory  had  disappeared  forever.  Mason  regrets  that  Gray 
did  not  write  a  mock-heroic  poem  on  this  incident,  as  a 
companion  to  the  ode  on  Walpole's  cat,  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  theme  was  an  excellent  one. 

The  name  of  Addison  has  just  been  mentioned,  and 
Walpole's  remarks  about  the  horrors  of  Alpine  travelling 
do  indeed  savour  of  the  old-fashioned  fear  of  what  was 
sublime  in  nature.  But  Gray's  sentiments  on  the  occa- 
sion were  very  different,  and  his  letter  to  his  mother  di- 
lates on  the  beauty  of  the  crags  and  precipices  in  a  way 
that  shows  him  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  romantic 
lovers  of  nature,  since  even  Rousseau  had  then  hardly  de- 
veloped his  later  and  more  famous  attitude,  and  Vernet 
had  only  just  begun  to  contemplate  the  sea  with  ecstasy. 
On  the  7th  of  November,  1739,  the  travellers  had  reached 
Turin,  but  amongst  the  clean  streets  and  formal  avenues 
of  that  prosaic  city  the  thoughts  of  Gray  were  still  con- 
tinually in  the  wonders  he  had  left  behind  him.  In  a 
delightful  letter  to  West,  written  nine  days  later,  he  is 
still  dreaming  of  the  Alps :  "  I  own  I  have  not,  as  yet, 
anywhere  met  with  those  grand  and  simple  works  of  art 
that  are  to  amaze  one,  and  whose  sight  one  is  to  be  the 


u. J  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  33 

better  for;  but  those  of  nature  have  astonished  me  be- 
yond expression.  In  our  little  journey  up  to  the  Grande 
Chartreuse  I  do  not  remember  to  have  gone  ten  paces 
without  an  exclamation  that  there  was  no  restraining ; 
not  a  precipice,  not  a  torrent,  not  a  cliff,  but  is  pregnant 
with  religion  and  poetry.  There  are  certain  scenes  that 
would  awe  an  atheist  into  belief,  without  the  help  of  other 
argument.  One  need  not  have  a  very  fantastic  imagina- 
tion to  see  spirits  there  at  noon-day.  You  have  Death 
perpetually  before  your  eyes,  only  so  far  removed  as  to 
compose  the  mind  without  frighting  it.  I  am  well  per- 
suaded St.  Bruno  was  a  man  of  no  common  genius,  to 
choose  such  a  situation  for  his  retirement ;  and  perhaps 
I  should  have  been  a  disciple  of  his,  had  I  been  born  in 
his  time."  It  is  hard  to  cease  quoting,  all  this  letter  be- 
ing so  new,  and  beautiful,  and  suggestive ;  but  perhaps 
enough  has  been  given  to  show  in  what  terms  and  on 
what  occasion  the  picturesqueness  of  Switzerland  was  first 
discovered.  At  the  same  time  the  innovator  concedes  that 
Mont  Cenis  does,  perhaps,  abuse  its  privilege  of  being 
frightful.  Amongst  the  precipices  Gray  read  Livy,  Nives 
ccelo  prope  immistce,  but  when  the  chaise  drove  down  into 
the  sunlit  plains  of  Italy,  he  laid  that  severe  historian 
aside,  and  plunged  into  the  pages  of  Silius  Italicus. 

On  the  18th  of  November  they  passed  on  to  Genoa, 
which  Gray  particularly  describes  as  "a  vast  semicircular 
basin,  full  of  fine  blue  sea,  and  vessels  of  all  sorts  and 
sizes,  some  sailing  out,  some  coming  in,  and  others  at 
anchor ;  and  all  round  it  palaces,  and  churches  peeping 
over  one  another's  heads,  gardens,  and  marble  terraces  full 
of  orange  and  cypress  trees,  fountains  and  trellis -works 
covered  with  vines,  which  altogether  compose  the  grandest 
of  theatres."     The  music  in  Italy  was  a  feast  to  him,  and 


34  GRAY.  [chap. 

from  this  time  we  may  date  that  careful  study  of  Italian 
music  which  occupied  a  great  part  of  the  ensuing  year. 
Ten  days  at  Genoa  left  them  deeply  in  love  with  it,  and 
loth  to  depart ;  but  they  wished  to  push  on,  and  crossing 
the  mountains,  they  found  themselves  within  three  days 
at  Piacenza,  and  so  at  Parma;  out  of  which  city  they 
were  locked  on  a  cold  winter's  night,  and  were  only  able 
to  gain  admittance  by  an  ingenious  stratagem  which 
amused  them  very  much,  but  which  they  have  neglected 
to  record.  They  greatly  enjoyed  the  Correggios  in  this 
place,  for  Horace  Walpole  was  now  learning  to  be  a  con- 
noisseur, and  then  they  proceeded  to  Bologna,  where  they 
spent  twelve  days  in  seeing  the  sights.  They  found  it 
very  irksome  to  be  without  introductions,  especially  after 
the  hospitality  which  they  had  enjoyed  in  France,  and  as 
it  was  winter  they  could  only  see,  in  Gray's  words,  the 
skeleton  of  Italy.  He  was  at  least  able  to  observe  "  very 
public  and  scandalous  doings  between  the  vine  and  the 
elm-trees,  and  how  the  olive-trees  are  shocked  thereupon." 
It  is  also  particularly  pleasant  to  learn  that  he  himself  was 
"grown  as  fat  as  a  hog;"  he  was,  in  fact,  perfectly  happy 
and  well,  perhaps  for  the  only  time  in  his  life. 

They  crossed  the  Apennines  on  the  15th  of  the  month, 
and  descended  through  a  winding-sheet  of  mist  into  the 
streets  of  Florence,  where  Mr.  Horace  Mann's  servant  met 
them  at  the  gates,  and  conducted  them  to  his  house, 
which,  with  a  certain  interval,  was  to  be  their  home  for 
fifteen  months.  Horace  Mann  was  a  dull  letter  -  writer, 
but  he  seems  to  have  been  a  very  engaging  and  unweary- 
ing companion.  Gray,  a  man  not  easily  pleased,  pro- 
nounced him  "  the  best  and  most  obliging  person  in  the 
world."  He  was  then  resident,  and  afterwards  envoy  ex- 
traordinary, at  the  Court  of  Tuscany,  and  retains  a  place 


ii.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  35 

in  history  as  the  correspondent  of  Horace  Walpolc  through 
nearly  half  a  century  of  undivided  friendship.  Here 
again  the  travel-stained  youths  had  the  pleasures  of  society 
offered  to  them,  and  Gray  could  encase  himself  again  in 
silk  and  buckram,  and  wear  ruffles  at  the  tips  of  his  fin- 
gers. Moreover,  his  mind,  the  most  actively  acquisitive 
then  stirring  in  Europe,  could  engage  once  more  in  its 
enchanting  exercises,  and  store  up  miscellaneous  informa- 
tion with  unflagging  zeal  in  a  thousand  nooks  of  brain 
and  note-book.  Music,  painting,  and  statuary  occupied 
him  chiefly,  and  his  unpublished  catalogues,  not  less  strik- 
ingly than  his  copious  printed  notes,  show  the  care  and 
assiduity  of  his  research.  His  Criticisms  on  Architecture 
and  Painting  in  Italy  is  not  an  amusing  treatise,  but  it 
is  without  many  of  the  glaring  faults  of  the  aesthetic  dis- 
sertations of  the  age.  The  remarks  about  antique  sculpt- 
ure are  often  very  just  and  penetrative — as  fine  sometimes 
as  those  exquisite  notes  by  Shelley,  which  first  saw  the 
light  in  1880.  Some  of  his  views  about  modern  masters, 
too,  show  the  native  propriety  of  his  taste,  and  his  en- 
tire indifference  to  contemporary  judgment.  For  Cara- 
vaggio,  for  instance,  then  at  the  height  of  his  vogue,  he 
has  no  patience ;  although,  in  common  with  all  critics  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  all  human  beings  till  about  a 
generation  ago,  he  finds  Gnido  inexpressibly  brilliant  and 
harmonious.  It  is,  however,  chiefly  interesting  to  us  to 
notice  that  in  these  copious  notes  on  painting  Gray  dis- 
tinguishes himself  from  other  writers  of  his  time  by  his 
simple  and  purely  artistic  mode  of  considering  what  is 
presented  to  him,  every  other  critic,  as  far  as  I  remember, 
down  to  Lessing  and  Winckelmanu,  being  chiefly  occu- 
pied with  rhetorical  definitions  of  the  action  upon  the 
human  mind  of  art  in  the  abstract.     Gray  scarcely  men' 


36  GRAY.  [chap. 

tions  a  single  work,  however,  precedent  to  the  age  of 
Raphael ;  and  it  will  not  do  to  insist  too  strongly  upon 
his  independence  of  the  prejudices  of  his  time. 

In  music  he  seems  to  have  been  still  better  occupied. 
He  was  astonished,  during  his  stay  in  Florence,  at  the 
beauty  and  originality  of  the  new  school  of  Italian  com- 
posers, at  that  time  but  little  known  in  England.  He 
seems  to  have  been  particularly  struck  with  Leonardo  da 
Vinci,  who  was  then  just  dead,  and  with  Bononcini  and 
the  German  Hasse,  who  were  still  alive.  At  Naples  a  few 
months  later  he  found  Leonardo  Leo,  and  was  attracted  by 
his  genius.  But  the  full  ardour  of  his  admiration  was  re- 
served for  the  works  of  G.  B.  Pergolesi,  whose  elevation 
above  the  other  musicians  of  his  age  Gray  was  the  first  to 
observe  and  assert.  Pergolesi,  who  had  died  four  years 
before,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  was  entirely  unknown 
outside  Tuscany;  and  to  the  English  poet  belongs  the 
praise,  it  is  said,  of  being  the  first  to  bring  a  collection  of 
his  pieces  to  London,  and  to  obtain  for  this  great  master  a 
hearing  in  British  concert-rooms.  Gray  was  one  of  the  few 
poets  who  have  possessed  not  merely  an  ear  for  music,  but 
considerable  executive  skill.  Mason  tells  us  that  he  enjoyed, 
probably  at  this  very  time,  instruction  on  the  harpsichord 
from  the  younger  Scarlatti,  but  his  main  gift  was  for  vocal 
music.  He  had  a  small  but  very  clear  and  pure  voice,  and 
was  much  admired  for  his  singing  in  his  youth,  but  during 
later  years  was  so  shy  that  Walpole  "  never  could  but  once 
prevail  on  him  to  give  a  proof  of  it ;  and  then  it  was  with 
so  much  pain  to  himself,  that  it  gave  Walpole  no  manner 
of  pleasure."  In  after-years  he  had  a  harpsichord  in  his 
rooms  at  college,  and  continued  to  cultivate  this  sentimen- 
tal  sort  of  company  in  his  long  periods  of  solitude.  Gray 
formed  a  valuable  collection  of  MS.  music  whilst  he  was  in 


ii.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  87 

Italy ;  it  consisted  of  nine  large  volumes,  bound  jn  vellum, 
and  was  enriched  by  a  variety  of  notes  in  Gray's  hand- 
writing. 

It  was  at  Florence,  on  the  12th  of  March,  1740,  that 
Gray  took  it  into  his  head  to  commence  a  correspondence 
with  his  old  school-fellow,  Dr.  Thomas  Wharton  ("  my 
dear,  dear  Wharton,  which  is  a  '  dear '  more  than  I  give 
anybody  else"),  who  afterwards  became  Fellow  of  Pem- 
broke Hall,  and  one  of  Gray's  staunchest  and  most  sym- 
pathetic friends.  To  the  biographer  of  the  poet,  more- 
over, the  name  of  Wharton  must  be  ever  dear,  since  it  was 
to  him  that  the  least  reserved  and  most  personal  of  al! 
Gray's  early  letters  were  indited.  This  Dr.  Wharton  was 
a  quiet,  good  man,  with  no  particular  genius  or  taste,  but 
dowered  with  that  delightful  tact  and  sympathetic  attrac- 
tion which  are  the  lode-star  of  irritable  and  weary  genius. 
He  was  by  a  few  months  Gray's  junior,  and  survived  him 
three-and-twenty  years,  indolently  intending,  it  is  said,  to 
the  last,  to  collect  his  memories  of  his  great  friend,  but  dy- 
ing in  his  eightieth  year  so  suddenly  as  to  be  incapable  of 
any  preparation.  In  this,  his  first  letter  to  Wharton,  Gray 
mentions  the  death  of  Pope  Clement  XII.,  which  had  oc- 
curred about  a  month  before,  and  states  his  intention  to 
be  at  Rome  in  time  to  see  the  coronation  of  his  successor, 
which,  however,  as  it  happened,  was  delayed  six  months. 
So  little,  however,  were  Walpole  and  Gray  prepared  for 
this,  that  they  set  out  in  the  middle  of  March,  1740,  in 
great  fear  lest  they  should  be  too  late,  and  entered  Rome 
on  the  31st  of  that  month.  They  found  the  conclave  of 
cardinals  sitting  and  like  to  sit ;  and  they  prepared  them- 
selves to  enjoy  Rome  in  the  mean  while.  The  magnificence 
of  the  ancient  city  infinitely  surpassed  Gray's  expectation, 
but  he  found  modern  Rome  and  its  inhabitants  very  con- 


f~   (V  << 


>    J 


38  GRAY.  [chap. 

tcmptible  and  disgusting.  There  was  no  society  amongst 
the  Roman  nobles,  who  pushed  parsimony  to  an  extreme, 
and  showed  not  the  least  hospitality.  "In  short,  child" 
(Walpole  says  to  West,  on  the  16th  of  April),  "after  sun- 
set one  passes  one's  time  here  very  ill ;  and  if  I  did  not 
wish  for  you  in  the  mornings,  it  would  be  no  compliment 
to  tell  you  that  I  do  in  the  evening."  From  Tivoli,  a 
month  later,  Gray  writes  West  a  very  contemptuous  de- 
scription of  the  artificial  cascades  and  cliffs  of  the  Duke 
of  Modena's  palace-gardens  there;  but  a  few  days  after- 
wards, at  Alba  and  Frascati,  he  was  inspired  in  a  gentler 
mood  with  the  Alcaic  Ode  to  Favonius,  beginning  "  Mater 
rosarum."  Of  the  same  date  is  a  letter  laughing  at  West, 
who  had  made  some  extremely  classical  allusions  in  his 
correspondence,  and  who  is  indulged  with  local  colour  to 
his  heart's  content : 

"I  am  to-day  just  returned  from  Alba,  a  good  deal  fatigued,  for 
you  know  (from  Statius)  that  the  Appian  is  somewhat  tiresome.  We 
dined  at  Pompey's ;  he  indeed  was  gone  for  a  few  days  to  his  Tus- 
culan,  but,  by  the  care  of  his  villicus,  we  made  an  admirable  meal. 
We  had  the  dugs  of  a  pregnant  sow,  a  peacock,  a  dish  of  thrushes, 
a  noble  scarus  just  fresh  from  the  Tyrrhene,  and  some  conchylia  of 
the  Lake,  with  garum  sauce.  For  my  part,  I  never  ate  better  at  Lu- 
cullus's  table.  We  drank  half  a  dozen  cyathi  apiece  of  ancient  Alban 
to  Pholoe's  health ;  and,  after  bathing,  and  playing  an  hour  at  ball, 
we  mounted  our  essedum  again,  and  proceeded  up  the  mount  to  the 
temple.  The  priests  there  entertained  us  with  an  account  of  a  won- 
derful shower  of  birds'  eggs,  that  had  fallen  two  days  before,  which 
had  no  sooner  touched  the  ground  but  they  were  converted  into  gud- 
geons ;  as  also  that  the  night  past  a  dreadful  voice  had  been  heard 
out  of  the  Adytum,  which  spoke  Greek  during  a  full  half-hour,  but 
nobody  understood  it.  But,  quitting  my  Romanities,  to  your  great 
joy  and  mine,  let  me  tell  you  in  plain  English  that  we  come  from 
Albano." 


ii.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  S9 

Some  entertainments  Gray  had  at  Rome.  He  mentions 
one  ball  at  which  he  performed  the  part  of  the  mouse  at 
the  party.  The  chief  virtuoso  of  the  hour,  La  Diaman- 
tina,  played  on  the  violin,  and  Giovannino  and  Pasquelini 
sang.  All  the  secular  grand  monde  of  Rome  was  there, 
and  there  Gray,  from  the  corner  where  he  sat  regaling 
himself  with  iced  fruits,  watched  the  object  of  his  hearty 
disapproval,  the  English  Pretender,  "  displaying  his  rueful 
length  of  person."  Gray's  hatred  of  the  Stuarts  was  one 
of  his  few  pronounced  political  sentiments,  and  whilst  at 
Rome  he  could  not  resist  making  a  contemptuous  jest  of 
them  in  a  letter  which  he  believed  that  James  would  open. 
He  says,  indeed,  that  all  letters  sent  or  received  by  Eng- 
lish people  in  Rome  were  at  that  time  read  by  the  Pre- 
tender. In  June,  as  the  cardinals  could  not  make  up  their 
minds,  the  young  men  decided  to  wait  no  longer,  and  pro- 
ceeded southwards  to  Terracina,  Capua,  and  Naples.  On 
the  17th  of  June  they  visited  the  remains  of  Herculaneum, 
then  only  just  exposed  and  identified,  and  before  the  end 
of  the  month  they  went  back  to  Rome.  There,  still  find- 
ing that  no  Pope  was  elected,  and  weary  of  the  dreariness 
and  formality  of  that  great  city,  Walpole  determined  to 
return  to  Florence.  They  had  now  been  absent  from 
home  and  habitually  thrown  upon  one  another  for  enter- 
tainment during  nearly  fifteen  months,  and  their  friend- 
ship had  hitherto  shown  no  abatement.  But  they  had 
arrived  at  that  point  of  familiarity  when  a  very  little  dis- 
agreement is  sufficient  to  produce  a  quarrel.  No  such 
serious  falling-out  happened  for  nearly  a  year  more,  but 
we  find  Gray,  whose  note-books  were  inexhaustible,  a  lit- 
tle peevish  at  being  forced  to  leave  the  treasures  of  Rome 
so  soon.  However,  Florence  was  very  enjoyable.  They 
took  up  their  abode  once  more  in  the  house  of  Horace 
1)       3  27 


40  GRAY.  [chap. 

Mann,  where  they  looked  down  into  the  Arno  from  their 
bedroom  windows,  and  could  resort  at  a  moment's  notice 
to  the  marble  bridge,  to  hear  music,  eat  iced  fruits,  and 
sup  by  moonlight.  It  is  a  place,  Gray  says,  "excellent 
to  employ  all  one's  animal  sensations  in,  but  utterly  con- 
trary to  one's  rational  powers.  I  have  struck  a  medal 
upon  myself ;  the  device  is  thus  O,  and  the  motto  Nihi- 
lissimo,  which  I  take  in  the  most  concise  manner  to  con- 
tain a  full  account  of  my  person,  sentiments,  occupations, 
and  late  glorious  successes.  We  get  up  at  twelve  o'clock, 
breakfast  till  three,  dine  till  four,  sleep  till  six,  drink  cool- 
ing liquors  till  eight,  go  to  the  bridge  till  ten,  sup  till  two, 
and  so  sleep  till  twelve  again." 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  laziness,  however,  the  business 
of  literature  recurred  to  his  thoughts.  He  wrote  some 
short  things  in  Latin,  then  a  fragment  of  sixty  hexameter 
verses  on  the  Gaurus,  and  then  set  about  a  very  ambitious 
didactic  epic,  Be  Principiis  Cogitandi.  It  is  a  curious 
commentary  on  the  small  bulk  of  Gray's  poetical  produc- 
tions to  point  out  that  this  Latin  poem,  only  two  frag- 
ments of  which  were  ever  written,  is  considerably  the  long- 
est of  his  writings  in  verse.  As  wTe  now  possess  it,  it  was 
chiefly  written  in  Florence  during  the  summer  of  1740; 
some  passages  were  added  at  Stoke  in  1742  ;  but  by  that 
time  Gray  had  determined,  like  other  learned  Cambridge 
poets,  Spenser  and  Milton,  to  bend  to  the  vulgar  ear,  and 
leave  his  Latin  behind  him.  The  De  Principiis  Cogitandi 
is  now  entirely  neglected,  and  at  no  time  attracted  much 
curiosity ;  yet  it  is  a  notable  production  in  its  way.  It 
was  an  attempt  to  crystallize  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  for 
which  Gray  entertained  the  customary  reverence  of  his 
age,  in  Lucretian  hexameters.  How  the  Soul  begins  to 
Know  ;  by  what  primary  Notions  Mnemosyne  opens  her 


d.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  41 

succession  of  thoughts,  and  her  slender  chain  of  ideas ; 
how  Reason  contrives  to  augment  her  slow  empire  in  tbe 
natural  breast  of  man  ;  and  how  anger,  sorrow,  fear,  and 
anxious  care  are  implanted  there — of  these  things  he  ap- 
plies himself  to  sing ;  and  do  not  thou  disdain  the  singer, 
thou  glory,  thou  unquestioned  second  luminary  of  the 
English  race,  thou  unnamed  spirit  of  John  Locke.  With 
the  exception  of  one  episode,  in  which  he  compares  the 
human  mind  in  reverie  to  a  Hamadryad  who  wanders  in 
the  woodland,  and  is  startled  to  find  herself  mirrored  in 
a  pool,  the  plan  of  this  poem  left  no  scope  for  fancy  or 
fine  imagery ;  the  theme  is  treated  with  a  certain  rhetori- 
cal dignity,  but  the  poet  has  been  so  much  occupied  with 
the  matter  in  hand,  that  his  ideas  have  suffered  some  con- 
gestion. Nevertheless  he  is  himself,  and  not  Virgil  or 
Ovid  or  Lucretius,  and  this  alone  is  no  small  praise  for  a 
writer  of  modern  Latin  verse. 

If  the  De  Principiis  Cogitandi  had  been  published  when 
it  was  written,  it  is  probable  that  it  would  have  won  some 
measure  of  instant  celebrity  for  its  author,  but  the  undi- 
luted conclusions  of  Locke  were  no  longer  interesting  in  a 
second-hand  form  in  1774,  when  they  had  already  been 
subjected  to  the  expansions  of  Hume  and  the  criticisms  of 
Leibnitz.  Nor  was  Gray  at  all  on  the  wave  of  philosoph- 
ical thought ;  he  seems  no  less  indifferent  to  Berkeley's 
Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  than  he  is  unaware  of 
Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  which  had  been 
printed  in  1739,  soon  after  Gray  left  England.  This 
Latin  epic  was  a  distinct  false  start,  but  he  did  not  to- 
tally abandon  the  hope  of  completing  it  until  1746. 

In  August,  1740,  the  friends  went  over  to  Bologna  for 
a  week,  and  on  their  return  had  the  mortification  to  learn 
that  a  Pope,  Benedict  XII.,  had  been  elected  whilst  they 


42  GRAY.  [chap. 

were  within  four  days'  journey  of  Rome.  They  began  to 
think  of  home ;  there  were  talks  of  taking  a  felucca  over 
from  Leghorn  to  Marseilles,  or  of  crossing  through  Ger- 
many by  Venice  and  the  Tyrol.  Florence  they  began  to 
find  "one  of  the  dullest  cities  in  Italy,"  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  they  began  to  be  on  very  strained  and  uncom- 
fortable terms  with  one  another.  They  had  the  grace, 
however,  absolutely  to  conceal  it  from  other  people,  and 
to  the  very  last  each  of  them  wrote  to  West  without  the 
least  hint  of  want  of  confidence  in  the  other.  On  the 
24th  of  April,  1741,  Gray  and  Walpole  set  off  from  Flor- 
ence, and  spent  a  few  days  in  Bologna  to  hear  La  Viscon- 
tina  sing ;  from  Bologna  they  proceeded  to  Reggio,  and 
there  occurred  the  famous  quarrel  which  has  perhaps  been 
more  often  discussed  than  any  other  fact  in  Gray's  life. 
It  has  been  said  that  he  discovered  Walpole  opening  a 
letter  addressed  to  Gray,  or  perhaps  written  by  him,  to  see 
if  anything  unpleasant  about  himself  were  said  in  it,  and 
that  he  broke  away  from  him  with  scathing  anger  and 
scorn,  casting  Walpole  off  forever,  and  at  once  continuing 
his  journey  to  Venice  alone.  But  this  is  really  little  more 
than  conjecture.  Both  the  friends  were  very  careful  to 
keep  their  counsel,  and  within  three  years  the  breach  was 
healed.  One  thing  is  certain,  that  Walpole  was  the  of- 
fender. When  Gray  was  dead  and  Mason  was  writing  his 
life,  Walpole  insisted' that  this  fact  should  be  stated,  al- 
though he  very  reasonably  declined  to  go  into  particulars 
for  the  public.  He  wrote  a  little  paragraph  for  Mason, 
taking  the  blame  upon  himself,  but  added  for  the  biog- 
rapher's private  information  a  longer  and  more  intelligible 
account,  saying  that  "  while  one  is  living  it  is  not  pleasant 
to  read  one's  private  quarrels  discussed  in  magazines  and 
newspapers,"  but  desiring  that  Mason  would  preserve  this 


ii.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  43 

particular  accouut,  that  it  might  be  given  to  posterity. 
But  Walpole  lived  on  until  1797,  and  by  a  singular  coin- 
cidence Mason,  who  was  so  much  younger,  only  survived 
hirn  a  few  days.  Accordingly  there  was  a  delay  in  giving 
this  passage  to  the  world ;  and  though  it  is  known  to 
students  of  Horace  Walpole's  Corresjiondence,  it  has  never 
taken  the  authoritative  place  it  deserves  in  Gray's  life. 
It  is  all  we  possess  in  the  way  of  direct  evidence,  and  it 
does  great  credit  no  less  to  Walpole's  candour  than  to 
his  experience  of  the  human  heart.  He  wrote  to  Mason 
(March  2,1773): 

"  I  am  conscious  that  in  the  beginning  of  the  differences  between 
Gray  and  me  the  fault  was  mine.  I  was  too  young,  too  fond  of  my 
own  diversions,  nay,  I  do  not  doubt,  too  much  intoxicated  by  indul- 
gence, vanity,  and  the  insolence  of  my  situation  as  Prime-minister's 
son,  not  to  have  been  inattentive  and  insensible  to  the  feelings  of  one 
I  thought  below  me ;  of  one,  I  blush  to  say  it,  that  I  knew  was  obliged 
to  me ;  of  one  whom  presumption  and  folly,  perhaps,  made  me  deem 
not  my  superior  then  in  parts,  though  I  have  since  felt  my  infinite  in- 
feriority to  him.  I  treated  him  insolently ;  he  loved  me,  and  I  did 
not  think  he  did.  I  reproached  him  with  the  difference  between  us, 
when  he  acted  from  convictions  of  knowing  he  was  my  superior.  I 
often  disregarded  his  wishes  of  seeing  places,  which  I  would  not  quit 
other  amusements  to  visit,  though  I  offered  to  send  him  to  them  with- 
out me.  Forgive  me,  if  I  say  that  his  temper  was  not  conciliating  ; 
at  the  same  time  that  I  will  confess  to  you  that  he  acted  a  more 
friendly  part,  had  I  had  the  sense  to  take  advantage  of  it— he  freely 
told  me  of  my  faults.  I  declared  I  did  not  desire  to  hear  them,  nor 
would  correct  them.  You  will  not  wonder  that,  with  the  dignity  of 
his  spirit  and  the  obstinate  carelessness  of  mine,  the  breach  must 
have  grown  wider  till  we  became  incompatible." 

This  is  the  last  word  on  the  subject  of  the  quarrel,  and  af- 
ter a  statement  so  generous,  frank,  and  lucid  it  only  remains 
to  remiud  the  reader  that  these  were  lads  of  twentv-three 


44  GRAY.  [chap. 

and  twenty-four  respectively,  that  they  had  been  thrown 
far  too  exclusively  and  too  long  on  one  another  for  enter- 
tainment, and  that  probably  Walpole  is  too  hard  upon  him- 
self in  desiring  to  defend  Gray.  There  is  not  the  slightest 
trace  in  his  letters  or  in  Gray's  of  any  rudeness  on  Wal- 
pole's  part.  The  main  point  is  that  the  quarrel  was  made  up 
in  1744,  and  that  after  some  coldness  on  Gray's  side  they 
became  as  intimate  as  ever  for  the  remainder  of  their  lives. 
Walpole  stayed  at  Reggio,  and  Gray's  heart  would  have 
stirred  with  remorse  had  he  known  that  his  old  friend  was 
even  then  sickening  for  a  quinsy,  of  which  he  might  have 
died,  if  the  excellent  Joseph  Spence,  Oxford  Professor  of 
Poetry,  and  the  friend  of  Pope,  had  not  happened  to  be 
passing  through  Reggio  with  Lord  Lincoln,  and  had  not 
given  up  his  whole  time  to  nursing  him.  Meanwhile  the 
unconscious  Gray,  sore  with  pride,  passed  on  to  Venice, 
where  he  spent  two  months  in  the  company  of  a  Mr. 
Whitehead  and  a  Mr.  Chute.  In  July  he  hired  a  courier, 
passed  leisurely  through  the  north  of  Italy,  visiting  Padua 
and  Verona,  reached  Turin  on  the  15th  of  August,  and  be- 
gan to  cross  the  Alps  next  day.  He  stayed  once  more  at 
the  Grande  Chartreuse,  and  inscribed  in  the  Album  of  the 
Fathers  his  famous  Alcaic  Ode,  beginning  "  Oh  Tu,  severi 
Religio  loci,"  which  is  the  best  known  and  practically  the 
last  of  his  Latin  poems.  In  this  little  piece  of  twenty 
lines  we  first  recognize  that  nicety  of  expression,  that  deli- 
cate lapidary  style,  that  touch  of  subdued  romantic  senti- 
ment, which  distinguish  the  English  poetry  of  Gray;  whilst 
it  is  perhaps  not  fantastic  to  detect  in  its  closing  lines  the 
first  dawn  of  those  ideas  which  he  afterwards  expanded 
into  the  Eleyy  in  a  Country  Church-yard.  The  original 
MS.  in  the  album  became  an  object  of  great  interest  to 
visitors  to  the  hospice  after  Gray's  death,  and  was  highly 


ii.]  THE  GRAND  TOUR.  45 

prized  by  the  fathers.  It  exists,  however,  no  longer;  it 
was  destroyed  by  a  rabble  from  Grenoble  during  the 
French  Revolution.  Gray  reached  Lyons  on  the  25th  of 
August,  and  returned  to  London  on  the  1st  of  September, 
1741,  after  an  absence  from  England  of  exactly  two  years 
and  five  months.  Walpole,  being  cured  of  his  complaint, 
arrived  in  England  ten  days  later.  To  a  good-natured  let- 
ter from  Henry  Conway,  suggesting  a  renewal  of  intimacy 
between  the  friends,  Gray  returned  an  answer  of  the  cold- 
est civility,  and  Horace  Walpole  now  disappears  rrom  our 
narrative  for  three  years. 


CHAPTER  III. 

STOKE-POGIS.  —  DEATH    OF    WEST. FIRST    ENGLISH    POEMS. 

On  his  return  from  Italy  Gray  found  bis  father  lying  very 
ill,  exhausted  by  successive  attacks  of  gout,  and  unable  to 
rally  from  them.  Two  months  later,  on  the  6th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1*741,  he  died  in  a  paroxysm  of  the  disease.  His  last 
act  had  been  to  squander  his  fortune,  which  seems  to  have 
remained  until  that  time  almost  unimpaired,  on  building  a 
country-house  at  Wanstead.  Not  only  had  he  not  written 
to  tell  his  son  of  this  adventure,  but  he  had  actually  con- 
trived to  conceal  it  from  his  wife.  Mason  is  not  correct 
in  saying  that  it  became  necessary  to  sell  this  house  im- 
mediately after  Philip  Gray's  death,  or  that  it  fetched 
2000£.  less  than  it  had  cost;  it  remained  in  the  posses- 
sion of  Mrs.  Gray.  With  the  ruins  of  a  fortune  Mrs. 
Gray  and  her  sister,  Mary  Antrobus,  seem  to  have  kept 
house  for  a  year  in  Cornhill,  till,  on  the  death  of  their 
brother-in-law,  Mr.  Jonathan  Rogers,  on  the  21st  of  Oc- 
tober, 1*742,  they  joined  their  widowed  sister  Anna  in  her 
house  at  Stoke-Pogis,  in  Buckinghamshire.  During  these 
months  they  wound  up  their  private  business  in  Corn- 
hill,  and  disposed  of  their  shop  on  tolerably  advantageous 
terms;  and  apparently  Gray  first  imagined  that  the  fam- 
ily property  would  be  enough  to  provide  amply  for  him 


chap,  in]  STOKE-POGIS.  41 

also.  Accordingly  he  began  the  study  of  the  law,  that 
being  the  profession  for  which  he  had  been  originally 
intended.  For  six  months  or  more  he  seems  to  have 
stayed  in  London,  applying  himself  rather  languidly  to 
common  law,  and  giving  his  real  thoughts  and  sympa- 
thies to  those  who  demanded  them  most,  his  mother  and 
his  unfortunate  friend,  Richard  West.  The  latter,  indeed, 
he  found  in  a  miserable  condition.  In  June,  1740,  that 
young  man,  having  lived  at  the  Temple  till  he  was  sick 
of  it,  left  chambers,  finding  that  neither  the  prestige  of  his 
grandfather  nor  the  reputation  of  his  uncle,  Sir  Thomas 
Burnet,  advanced  him  at  all  in  their  profession.  He  was 
without  heart  in  his  work,  his  talents  were  not  drawn  out 
in  the  legal  direction,  and  his  affectionate  and  somewhat 
feminine  nature  suffered  from  loneliness  and  want  of  con- 
genial society.  He  had  hoped  that  Walpole  would  be 
able  to  find  him  a  post  in  the  diplomatic  service  or  in  the 
army ;  but  this  was  not  possible.  Gray  strongly  disap- 
proved of  the  step  West  took  in  leaving  the  Temple,  and 
wrote  him  from  Florence  a  letter  full  of  kindly  and  cord- 
ial good-sense ;  but  when  he  arrived  in  London  he  found 
West  in  a  far  more  broken  condition  of  mind  and  body 
than  he  had  anticipated.  In  extreme  agitation  West  con- 
fided to  his  friend  a  terrible  secret  which  he  had  discov- 
ered, and  which  Gray  preserved  in  silence  until  the  close 
of  his  life,  when  he  told  it  to  Norton  Nichols.  It  is  a 
painful  story,  which  need  not  be  repeated  here,  but  which 
involved  the  reputation  of  West's  mother  with  the  name 
of  his  late  father's  secretary,  a  Mr.  Williams,  whom  she 
finally  married  when  her  son  was  dead.  West  had  not 
the  power  to  rally  from  this  shock,  and  the  comfort  of 
Gray's  society  only  slightly  delayed  the  end.  In  March, 
1742,  he  was  obliged  to  leave  town,  and  went  to  stay  with 
3* 


48  GRAY.  [chap. 

a  friend  at  Popes,  near  Hatfield,  Herts,  where  he  lingered 
three  months,  and  died. 

The  winter  which  Gray  and  West  spent  together  in 
London  was  remarkable  in  the  career  of  the  former  as  the 
beginning  of  his  most  prolific  year  of  poetical  composi- 
tion— a  vocal  year  to  be  followed  by  six  of  obstinate  si- 
lence. The  first  original  production  in  English  verse  was 
a  fragment  of  the  tragedy  of  Agrippina,  of  which  one 
complete  scene  and  a  few  odd  lines  have  been  preserved 
in  his  works.  In  this  attempt  at  the  drama  he  was  in- 
spired by  Racine,  and  neither  Addison,  nor  Aaron  Hill, 
nor  James  Thomson,  had  contrived  to  be  more  cold  or 
academic  a  playwright.  The  subject,  which  had  been 
treated  in  tragedy  more  than  a  century  earlier  by  May, 
was  well  adapted  for  stately  stage-effect,  and  the  scheme 
of  Gray's  play,  so  far  as  we  know  it,  was  not  without 
interest.  But  he  was  totally  unfitted  to  write  for  the 
boards,  and  even  the  beauty  of  versification  in  Agrippina 
cannot  conceal  from  us  for  a  moment  its  ineptitude.  All 
that  exists  of  the  play  is  little  else  than  a  soliloquy,  in 
which  the  Empress  defies  the  rage  of  Nero,  and  shows 
that  she  possesses 

"  A  heart  that  glows  with  the  pure  Julian  fire," 

by  daring  her  son  to  the  contest : 

"Around  thee  call 
The  gilded  swarm  that  wantons  in  the  .sunshine 
Of  thy  full  favour ;  Seneca  be  there 
In  gorgeous  phrase  of  laboured  eloquence 
To  dress  thy  plea,  and  Burrhus  strengthen  it 
With  his  plain  soldier's  oath  and  honest  seeming. 
Against  thee — liberty  and  Agrippina  t 
The  world  the  prize !  and  fair  befall  the  victors  !" 


in.]  STOKE-  I>OGIS.  49 

As  a  study  in  blank  verse  Agrippina  shows  the  result 
of  long  apprenticeship  to  the  ancients,  and  marches  with  a 
sharp  and  dignified  step  that  reminds  the  reader  more  of 
Landor  than  of  any  other  dramatist.  In  all  other  essen- 
tials, however,  the  tragedy  must  be  considered,  like  the 
didactic  epic,  a  false  start ;  but  Gray  was  now  very  soon 
to  learn  his  real  vocation. 

The  opening  scene  of  the  tragedy  was  sent  down  into 
Hertfordshire  to  amuse  West,  who  seemed  at  first  to  have 
recovered  his  spirits,  and  who  sat  "  purring  by  the  fireside, 
in  his  arm-chair,  with  no  small  satisfaction."  lie  was 
able  to  busy  himself  with  literature,  delighting  in  the  new 
revision  of  the  Dunciad,  and  reading  Tacitus  for  the  first 
time.  His  cool  reception  of  the  latter  roused  Gray  to 
defend  his  favourite  historian  with  great  vigour.  "  Pray 
do  not  imagine,"  he  says,  "  that  Tacitus,  of  all  authors  in 
the  world,  can  be  tedious.  .  .  .  Yet  what  I  admire  in  him 
above  all  is  his  detestation  of  tyranny,  and  the  high  spirit 
of  liberty  that  every  now  and  then  breaks  out,  as  it  were, 
whether  he  would  or  no."  Poor  West,  on  the  4th  of 
April,  racked  by  an  "  importunissima  tussis,"  declines  to 
do  battle  against  Tacitus,  but  attacks  Agrippina  with  a 
frankness  and  a  critical  sagacity  which  slew  that  ill-starred 
tragedy  on  the  spot.  It  is  evident  that  Gray  had  no  idea 
of  West's  serious  condition,  for  he  rallies  him  on  being 
the  first  who  ever  made  a  muse  of  a  cough,  and  is  confi- 
dent that  "  those  wicked  remains  of  your  illness  will  soon 
give  way  to  warm  weather  and  gentle  exercise."  It  is  in 
the  same  letter  that  Gray  speaks  with  some  coldness  of 
Joseph  Andrews,  and  reverts  with  the  warmth  on  which 
we  have  already  commented  to  the  much  more  congenial 
romances  of  Marivaux  and  Crebillou.  We  may  here  con- 
fess that  Gray  certainly    misses,  in    common    with  most 


50  GRAY.  [chap. 

men  of  his  time,  the  one  great  charm  of  the  literary  char- 
acter at  its  best,  namely,  enthusiasm  for  excellence  in  con- 
temporaries-. It  is  a  sign  of  a  dry  age  when  the  principal 
authors  of  a  country  look  askance  on  one  another.  Some 
silly  critics  in  our  own  days  have  discovered  with  indig- 
nant horror  the  existence  of  "mutual  admiration  socie- 
ties." A  little  more  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  lit- 
erature might  have  shown  them  how  strong  the  sentiment 
of  comradeship  has  been  in  every  age  of  real  intellectual 
vitality.  It  is  much  to  be  deplored  that  the  chilly  air 
of  the  eighteenth  century  prevented  the  "  mutual  admira- 
tion "  of  such  men  as  Gray  and  Fielding. 

This  is  perhaps  an  appropriate  point  at  which  to  pause 
and  consider  the  condition  of  English  poetry  at  the  mo- 
ment at  which  we  have  now  arrived.  When  Gray  began 
seriously  to  write,  in  1742,  the  considerable  poets  then 
alive  in  England  might  have  been  counted  on  the  fingers 
of  two  hands.  Pope  and  Swift  were  nearing  the  close  of 
their  careers  of  glory  and  suffering,  the  former  still  vocal 
to  the  last,  and  now  quite  unrivalled  by  any  predecessor  in 
personal  prestige.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  he  was 
not  destined  to  publish  anything  more  of  any  consequence. 
Three  other  names,  Goldsmith,  Churchill,  and  Covvper,  were 
those  of  children  not  to  appear  in  literature  for  many  years 
to  come.  Gray's  actual  competitors,  therefore,  were  only 
four  in  number.  Of  these  the  eldest,  Young,  was  just  be- 
ginning to  publish,  at  the  age  of  fifty-eight,  the  only  work 
by  which  he  is  now  much  remembered,  or  which  can  still 
be  read  with  pleasure.  The  Night  Thoughts  was  destined 
to  make  his  the  most  prominent  poetical  figure  for  the 
next  ten  years.  Thomson,  on  the  other  hand,  a  younger 
and  far  more  vital  spirit,  had  practically  retreated  already 
upon  his  laurels,  and  was  presently  to  die,  without  again 


m.l  STOKE-POGIS.  fil 

addressing  the  public,  except  in  the  luckless  tragedy  of 
Sojyhonisba,  bequeathing,  however,  to  posterity  the  treasure 
of  his  Castle  of  Indolence.  Samuel  Johnson  had  published 
London,  a  nine  days'  wonder,  and  had  subsided  into  tem- 
porary oblivion.  Collins,  just  twenty-one  years  of  age, 
had  brought  out  a  pamphlet  of  Persian  Eclogues  without 
attracting  the  smallest  notice  from  anybody.  Amongst 
the  lesser  stars  Allan  Ramsay  and  Ambrose  Philips  were 
retired  old  men,  now  a  long  while  silent,  who  remembered 
the  days  of  Addison  ;  Armstrong  had  flashed  into  unenvi- 
able distinction  with  a  poem  more  clever  than  decorous ; 
Dyer,  one  of  the  lazy  men  who  grow  fat  too  soon,  was 
buried  in  his  own  Fleece ;  Shenstone  and  Akenside,  much 
younger  men,  were  beginning  to  be  talked  about  in  the 
circle  of  their  friends,  but  had  as  yet  done  little.  The 
stage,  therefore,  upon  which  Gray  proceeded  very  gingerly 
to  step,  was  not  a  crowded  one,  and  before  he  actually 
ventured  to  appear  in  print  it  ,was  stripped  of  its  most 
notable  adornments.  Yet  this  apparent  advantage  was  in 
reality  a  great  disadvantage.  As  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  ad- 
mirably says,  "  born  in  the  same  year  with  Milton,  Gray 
would  have  been  another  man  ;  born  in  the  same  year  with 
Burns,  he  would  have  been  another  man."  As  it  was,  his 
genius  pined  away  for  want  of  movement  in  the  atmos- 
phere ;  the  wells  of  poetry  were  stagnant,  and  there  was 
no  angel  to  strike  the  waters. 

The  amiable  dispute  as  to  the  merits  of  Agrippina  led 
the  friends  on  to  a  wider  theme,  the  peculiar  qualities  of 
the  style  of  Shakspeare.  IIow  low  the  standard  of  crit- 
icism had  fallen  in  that  generation  may  be  estimated  when 
we  consider  that  Theobald,  himself  the  editor  and  anno- 
tator  of  Shakspeare,  in  palming  off  his  forgery  of  The 
Double  Falsehood,  which  contains  such  writing  as  this — 


62  GRAY.  [chap. 

"Fond  Echo,  forego  the  light  strain, 
And  needfully  hear  a  lost  maid; 
Go  tell  the  false  ear  of  the  swain 

How  deeply  his  vows  have  betrayed  " — 

as  a  genuine  work  by  the  author  of  Hamlet,  had  ventured 
to  appeal  to  the  style  as  giving  the  best  evidence  of  the 
truth  of  his  pretensions.  Gray  had  a  more  delicate  sense 
of  literary  flavour  than  this,  and  his  remarks  about  the 
vigour  and  pictorial  richness  of  Elizabethan  drama,  since 
which  "  our  language  has  greatly  degenerated,"  are  highly 
interesting  even  to  a  modern  reader.  Through  April  and 
May  he  kept  up  a  brisk  correspondence,  chiefly  on  books, 
with  West  at  Popes,  and  on  the  5th  of  the  latter  month 
he  received  from  his  friend  an  Ode  to  May,  beginning — 

"  Dear  Gray,  that  always  in  my  heart 
Possessest  still  the  better  part" — 

which  is  decidedly  the  most  finished  of  West's  produc- 
tions. Some  of  the  stanzas  of  this  ode  possess  much 
suavity  and  grace : 

"  Awake,  in  all  thy  glories  drest, 
Recall  the  zephyrs  from  the  west; 
Restore  the  sun,  revive  the  skies ; 
At  mine  and  Nature's  call  arise! 
Great  Nature's  self  upbraids  thy  stay, 
And  misses  her  accustomed  May." 

This  is  almost  in  the  later  style  of  Gray  himself,  and 
the  poem  received  from  him  commendation  as  being  "light 
and  genteel,"  a  phrase  that  sounds  curiously  old-fashioned 
nowadays.  Gray  meanwhile  is  busy  translating  Propertius, 
and  shows  no  sign  of  application  to  legal  studies.  On  the 
contrary,  he  has  spent  the  month  of  April  in  studying  the 
J'eloponncsian  War,  the  greater  part  of  Pliny  and  Martial, 


m.]  WEST'S  DEATH.  63 

Auacreon,  Petrarch,  and  Aulus  Gcllius,  a  range  of  reading 
which  must  have  entirely  excluded  Coke  upon  Lyttelton. 
West's  last  letter  is  dated  May  11, 1742,  and  is  very  cheer- 
fully written,  but  closes  with  words  that  afterwards  took  a 
solemn  meaning:  "Vale,  et  vive  paulisper  cum  vivis."  On 
the  27th  of  the  same  month  Gray  wrote  a  very  long  letter 
to  West,  in  which  he  shows  no  consciousness  whatever  of 
his  friend's  desperate  condition.  This  epistle  contains  an 
interesting  reference  to  his  own  health : 

"Mine,  you  are  to  know,  is  a  white  melancholy,  or  rather  leuco- 
choly,  for  the  most  part;  which,  though  it  seldom  laughs  or  dances, 
nor  ever  amounts  to  what  one  calls  joy  or  pleasure,  yet  is  a  good, 
easy  sort  of  a  state,  and  ea  ne  laisse  que  de  s'amuser.  The  only  fault 
is  its  vapidity,  which  is  apt  now  and  then  to  give  a  sort  of  ennui, 
which  makes  one  form  certain  little  wishes  that  signify  nothing.  But 
there  is  another  sort,  black  indeed,  which  I  have  now  and  then  felt, 
that  has  somewhat  in  it  like  Tertullian's  rule  of  faith,  Credo  quia 
impossidile  est;  for  it  believes,  nay,  is  sure  of  everything  that  is  un- 
likely, so  it  be  but  frightful ;  and  on  the  other  hand  excludes  and 
shuts  its  eyes  to  the  most  possible  hopes,  and  everything  that  is 
pleasurable.  From  this  the  Lord  deliver  us!  for  none  but  He  and 
sunshiny  weather  can  do  it." 

Grimly  enough,  whilst  he  was  thus  analyzing  his  feelings, 
his  friend  lay  at  the  point  of  death.  Five  days  after  this 
letter  was  written  West  breathed  his  last,  on  the  1st  of 
June,  1742,  in  the  twenty-sixth  year  of  his  age,  and  was 
buried  in  the  chancel  of  Hatfield  church. 

Probably  on  the  same  day  that  West  died  Gray  went 
down  into  Buckinghamshire,  to  visit  his  uncle  and  aunt 
Rogers  at  Stoke-Pogis,  a  village  which  his  name  has  im- 
mortalized, and  of  which  it  may  now  be  convenient  to 
say  a  few  words.  The  manor  of  Stoke  Pogis  or  Poges 
is  first  mentioned  in  a  deed  of  1291,  and  passed  through 
the  hands  of  a  variety  of  eminent  personages  down  to  the 


64  GRAY.  [chap. 

great  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII. 
The  village,  if  such  it  can  be  called,  is  sparsely  scattered 
over  a  wide  extent  of  country.  The  church,  a  very  pict- 
uresque structure  of  the  fourteenth  century,  with  a  wood- 
en spire,  is  believed  to  have  been  built  by  Sir  John  Molines 
about  1340.  It  stands  on  a  little  level  space  about  four 
miles  north  of  the  Thames  at  Eton.  From  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  church  no  vestige  of  hamlet  or  village 
is  visible,  and  the  aspect  of  the  place  is  slightly  artificial, 
like  a  rustic  church  in  a  park  on  the  stage.  The  traveller 
almost  expects  to  see  the  grateful  peasantry  of  an  opera, 
cheerfully  habited,  make  their  appearance,  dancing  on  the 
greensward.  As  he  faces  the  church  from  the  south  the 
white  building,  extravagantly  Palladian,  which  lies  across 
the  meadows  on  his  left  hand,  is  Stoke  Park,  begun  under 
the  direction  of  Alexander  Nasmyth,  the  landscape-painter, 
in  1789,  and  finished  by  James  Wyatt,  R.A.,  for  the  Hon. 
Thomas  Penn,  who  bought  the  manor  from  the  represen- 
tatives of  Gray's  friend,  Lady  Cobham.  At  the  back  of 
the  visitor  stands  a  heavy  and  hideous  mausoleum,  bear- 
ing a  eulogistic  inscription  to  Gray,  and  this  also  is  due 
to  the  taste  of  Wyatt,  and  was  erected  in  1799.  If  we 
still  remain  on  the  south  side  of  the  church -yard,  the 
chimneys  seen  through  the  thick,  umbrageous  foliage  on 
our  right  hand,  and  behind  the  church,  are  those  of  the 
ancient  Manor  House,  celebrated  by  Gray  in  the  Long 
Story,  and  built  by  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  in  1555. 
The  road  from  Farnham  Royal  passes  close  to  it,  but  there 
is  little  to  be  seen.  Although  in  Gray's  time  it  seems  to 
have  been  in  perfect  preservation  as  an  exquisite  specimen 
of  Tudor  architecture,  with  its  high  gables,  projecting 
windows,  and  stacks  of  clustered  chimney -shafts,  it  did 
not  suit  the  corrupt  Georgian  taste  of  the  Penns,  and  was 


m.J  WEST'S  DEATH.  55 

pulled  down  in  1789.  Wyatt  refused  to  have  anything 
to  say  to  it,  and  remarked  that  "  the  style  of  the  edifice 
was  deficient  in  those  excellences  which  might  have  plead- 
ed for  restoration."  Of  the  historical  building  in  which 
Sir  Christopher  Hatton  lived  and  Sir  Edward  Coke  died 
nothing  is  left  but  the  fantastic  chimneys,  and  a  rough 
shell  which  is  used  as  a  stable.  This  latter  was  for  some 
time  fitted  up  as  a  studio  for  Sir  Edwin  Landseer,  and  he 
was  working  here  in  1852,  when  he  suddenly  became  de- 
ranged. This  old  ruin,  so  full  of  memories,  is  only  one 
of  a  number  of  ancient  and  curious  buildings  within  the 
boundaries  of  the  parish  of  Stoke -Pogis.  When  Gray 
came  to  Stoke,  in  1742,  the  Manor  House  was  inhabited 
by  the  Ranger  of  Windsor  Forest,  Viscount  Cobham,  who 
died  in  1749.  It  was  his  widow  who,  as  we  shall  present- 
ly see,  became  the  intimate  friend  of  Gray  and  inspired 
his  remarkable  poem  of  the  Long  Story. 

The  house  of  Mrs.  Rogers,  to  which  Gray  and  his  moth- 
er now  proceeded,  was  situated  at  West  End,  in  the  north- 
ern part  of  the  parish.  It  was  reached  from  the  church 
by  a  path  across  the  meadows,  along-side  the  hospital,  a 
fine  brick  building  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  so  by  the 
lane  leading  out  into  Stoke  Common.  Just  at  the  end  of 
this  lane,  on  the  left-hand  side,  looking  southwards,  with 
the  common  at  its  back,  stood  West  End  House,  a  simple 
farmstead  of  two  stories,  with  a  rustic  porch  before  the 
front  door,  and  this  was  Gray's  home  for  many  years. 
It  is  now  thoroughly  altered  and  enlarged,  and  no  longer 
contains  any  mark  of  its  original  simplicity.  The  charm 
of  the  house  to  the  poet  must  have  been  that  Burnham 
Beeches,  Stoke  Common,  and  Brockhurst  Woods  were  all 
at  hand,  and  within  reach  of  the  most  indolent  of  pedes 

trianSo  00 

E  ^ 


50  GRAY.  [chat. 

Gray  had  been  resident  but  very  few  days  at  Stoke- 
Pogis  before  he  wrote  the  poem  with  which  his  poetical 
works  usually  open,  his  Ode  to  Siiring.  Amongst  the  MS. 
at  Pembroke  there  occurs  a  copy  of  this  poem,  in  Gray's 
handwriting,  entitled  Noon  -  Tide :  an  Ode ;  and  in  the 
margin  of  it  there  is  found  this  interesting  note :  "  The 
beginning  of  June,  1742,  sent  to  Fav :  not  knowing  he 
was  then  dead."  Favonius  was  the  familiar  name  of 
West,  and  this  shows  that  Gray  received  no  intimation 
of  his  friend's  approaching  end,  and  no  summons  to  his 
bedside.  The  loss  of  West  was  one  of  the  most  profound 
that  his  reserved  nature  ever  suffered;  when  that  name 
was  mentioned  to  him,  nearly  thirty  years  afterwards,  he 
became  visibly  agitated,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  he 
seemed  to  feel  in  the  death  of  West  "  the  affliction  of  a 
recent  loss."  We  are  therefore  not  surprised  to  find  the 
Ode  to  Spring,  which  belongs  to  a  previous  condition  of 
things,  lighter  in  tone,  colder  in  sentiment,  and  more  triv- 
ial in  conception  than  his  other  serious  productions.  We 
are  annoyed  that,  in  the  very  outset,  he  should  borrow 
from  Milton  his  "rosy-bosomed  Hours,"  and  from  Pope 
his  "  purple  year."  Again,  there  is  a  perplexing  change 
of  tone  from  the  beginning,  where  he  was  perhaps  inspired 
by  that  exquisite  strain  of  florid  fancy,  the  Pervigilium 
Veneris,  to  the  stoic  moralizings  of  the  later  stanzas : 

"  How  vain  the  ardour  of  the  crowd, 
How  low,  how  little  are  the  proud, 
How  indigent  the  great!" 

It  may  be  noted,  by-the-way,  that  for  many  years  the 
last  two  adjectives,  now  so  happily  placed,  were  awkward- 
ly transposed.  The  best  stanza,  without  doubt,  is  the 
penultimate : 


ui.J  WEST'S  DEATH.  57 

"  To  Contemplation's  sober  eye 

Such  is  the  race  of  man : 
And  they  that  creep  and  they  that  fly 

Shall  end  where  they  began. 
Alike  the  busy  and  the  gay 
But  flutter  through  life's  little  day, 

In  Fortune's  varying  colours  drest  : 
Brush'd  by  the  hand  of  rough  Mischance 
Or  chill'd  by  age,  their  airy  dance 

They  leave,  in  dust  to  rest." 

The  final  stanza,  with  its  "glittering  female,"  and  its 
"painted  plumage,"  is  puerile  in  its  attempted  excess  of 
simplicity,  and  errs,  though  in  more  fantastic  language, 
exactly  as  such  crude  studies  of  Wordsworth's  as  Andreiu 
Jones  or  The  Two  Thieves  erred  half  a  centur}'  later. 
Nothing  was  gained  by  the  poet's  describing  himself  "a 
solitary  fly  "  without  a  hive  to  go  to.  The  mistake  was 
one  which  Gray  never  repeated,  but  it  is  curious  to  find 
two  of  the  most  sublime  poets  in  our  language,  both  spe- 
cially eminent  for  loftiness  of  idea,  beginning  by  eschewing 
all  reasonable  dignity  of  expression. 

But,  although  the  Ode  to  Spring  no  longer  forms  a 
favourite  part  of  Gray's  poetical  works,  it  possessed  con- 
siderable significance  in  1742,  and  particularly  on  account 
of  its  form.  It  was  the  first  note  of  protest  against  the 
hard  versification  which  had  reigned  in  England  for  more 
than  sixty  years.  The  Augustan  age  seems  to  have  suf- 
fered from  a  dulness  of  ear,  which  did  not  permit  it  to 
detect  a  rhyme  unless  it  rang  at  the  close  of  the  very  next 
pause.  Hence,  in  the  rare  cases  where  a  lyric  movement 
was  employed,  the  ordinary  octosyllabic  couplet  took  the 
place  of  those  versatile  measures  in  which  the  Elizabethan 
and  Jacobite  poets  had  delighted.  Swift,  Lady  "NVinchil- 
sea,  Parnell,  Philips,  and  Green,  the  five  poets  of  the  be- 


58  GRAY.  [chap. 

ginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  who  rebelled  against 
heroic  verse,  got  no  farther  in  metrical  innovation  than 
the  shorter  and  more  ambling  couplet.  Dyer,  in  his 
greatly  overrated  piece  called  Grongar  Hill,  followed  these 
his  predecessors.  But  Gray,  from  the  very  first,  showed  a 
disposition  to  return  to  more  national  forms,  and  to  work 
out  his  stanzas  on  a  more  harmonic  principle.  He  seems 
to  have  disliked  the  facility  of  the  couplet,  and  the  vague 
length  to  which  it  might  be  repeated.  His  view  of  a 
poem  was,  that  it  should  have  a  vertebrate  form,  which 
should  respond,  if  not  absolutely  to  its  subject,  at  least  to 
its  mood.  In  short,  he  was  a  genuine  lyrist,  and  our 
literature  had  possessed  none  since  Milton  and  the  last 
Cavalier  song-writers.  Yet  his  stanzas  are  built  up  from 
very  simple  materials.  Here,  in  the  Ode  to  Spring,  we 
begin  with  a  quatrain  of  the  common  ballad  measures; 
an  octosyllabic  couplet  is  added,  and  this  would  close  it 
with  a  rustic  effect,  were  the  music  not  prolonged  by  the 
addition  of  three  lines  more,  whilst  the  stanza  closes  grave- 
ly with  a  short  line  of  six  syllables. 

The  news  of  the  death  of  AYest  deepened  Gray's  vein 
of  poetry,  but  did  not  stop  its  flow.  He  poured  forth 
his  grief  and  affection  in  some  impassioned  hexameters, 
full  of  earnest  feeling,  which  he  afterwards  tried,  ineptly 
enough,  to  tack  on  to  the  icy  periods  of  his  De  Principiis 
Cogitandi.  In  no  other  of  his  writings  does  Gray  employ 
quite  the  same  personal  and  emotional  accents,  in  none 
does  he  speak  out  so  plainly  from  the  heart,  and  with  so 
little  attention  to  his  singing  robes : 

"  Vidi  egoraet  duro  graviter  concussa  dolore 
Pectora,  in  altcrius  non  unquam  lenta  dolorqjn  ; 
Et  Ianguere  oculos  vidi,  et  pallescere  amantem 
Vultum,  quo  nunquam  Pictas  nisi  rara,  Fidesque, 


m.J  WEST'S  DEATH.  59 

Altus  amor  Veri,  et  purum  spirabat  Honestum. 
Visa  tamen  tardi  demum  inclementia  morbi 
Cessere  est,  reducenique  iterum  rosco  ore  Salutem 
Speravi,  atque  una  tecum,  dilecte  Favoni !" 

This  fragment,  the  most  attractive  of  his  Latin  poems, 
trips  on  a  tag  from  Propertius,  and  suddenly  ceases,  nor  is 
there  extant  any  later  effusion  of  Gray's  in  the  same  lan- 
guage. He  celebrated  the  death  of  Favonius  in  another 
piece,  which  is  far  more  familiar  to  general  readers.  The 
MS.  of  this  sonnet,  now  at  Cambridge,  is  marked  "  at 
Stoke:  Aug.  1742;"  it  was  not  published  till  Mason 
included  it  in  his  Memoirs: 

"  In  vain  to  me  the  smiling  mornings  shine, 

And  reddening  Phoebus  lifts  his  golden  fire; 
The  birds  in  vain  their  amorous  descant  join, 

Or  cheerful  fields  resume  their  green  attire : 
These  ears,  alas  !  for  other  notes  repine, 

A  different  object  do  these  eyes  require ; 
My  lonely  anguish  melts  no  heart  but  mine, 

And  in  my  breast  th'  imperfect  joys  expire. 
Yet  morning  smiles  the  busy  race  to  cheer, 

And  new-born  pleasure  brings  to  happier  men ; 
The  fields  to  all  their  wonted  tribute  bear ; 

To  warm  their  little  loves  the  birds  complain  ; 
I  fruitless  mourn  to  him  that  cannot  hear, 

And  weep  the  more  because  I  weep  in  vain." 

This  little  composition  has  suffered  a  sort  of  notoriety 
from  the  fact  that  Wordsworth,  in  1800,  selected  it  as  an 
example  of  the  errors  of  an  ornate  style,  doing  so  because, 
as  he  frankly  admitted,  "Gray  stands  at  the  head  of  those 
who  by  their  reasonings  have  attempted  to  widen  the 
space  of  separation  betwixt  prose  and  metrical  composi- 
tion, and  was  more  than  any  other  man  curiously  elaborate 
in  the  structure  of  his  own  poetic  diction.1'     Wordsworth 


60  GRAY.  [chap. 

declares  that  out  of  the  fourteen  lines  of  his  poem  only 
five  are  of  any  value,  namely,  the  sixth,  seventh,  eighth, 
thirteenth,  and  fourteenth,  the  language  of  which  "  differs 
in  no  respect  from  that  of  prose."  But  this  does  not 
appear  to  be  particularly  ingenuous.  If  we  allow  the  sun 
to  be  called  Phoebus,  and  if  we  pardon  the  "  green  attire," 
there  is  not  a  single  expression  in  the  sonnet  which  is 
fantastic  or  pompous.  It  is  simplicity  itself  in  comparison 
with  most  of  Milton's  sonnets,  and  it  seems  as  though 
Wordsworth  might  have  found  an  instance  of  fatuous 
grandiloquence  much  fitter  to  his  hand  in  Young,  or  better 
still  in  Armstrong,  master  of  those  who  go  about  to  call 
a  hat  a  "swart  sombrero."  Gray's  graceful  sonnet  was 
plainly  the  result  of  his  late  study  of  Petrarch,  and  we 
may  remind  ourselves,  in  this  age  of  flourishing  sonneteers, 
that  it  is  almost  the  only  specimen  of  its  class  that  had 
been  written  in  English  for  a  hundred  years,  certainly  the 
only  one  that  is  still  read  with  pleasure.  One  other  fact 
may  be  noted,  that  in  this  little  poem  Gray  first  begins  to 
practise  the  quatrain  of  alternate  heroics,  which  later  on 
became,  as  we  shall  see,  the  basis  of  all  his  harmonic  ef- 
fects, and  which  he  learned  to  fashion  with  more  skill 
than  any  other  poet  before  or  since. 

In  the  same  month  of  August  was  written  the  Ode  on  a 
Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College,  or,  as  in  Gray's  own  MS., 
which  I  have  examined,  of  Eton  College,  Windsor,  and  the 
adjacent  country.  East  and  west  from  the  church  of 
Stoke- Pogis,  towards  Stoke  Green  in  the  one  direction, 
and  towards  Farnham  Royal  in  the  other,  there  rises  a 
gentle  acclivity,  from  which  the  ground  gradually  slopes 
southward  to  the  Thames,  and  which  lies  opposite  those 
"distant  spires"  and  "antique  towers"  which  Gray  has 
sung  in  melodious  numbers.      The  woodland  parish  of 


hi.]  WEST'S  DEATH.  61 

Stoke  is  full  of  little  rights-of-way,  meadow-paths  without 
hedges  that  skirt  the  breast  of  the  ridge  I  speak  of,  and 
reveal  against  the  southern  sky  the  embattled  outline  of 
Windsor.  The  Eton  Ode  is  redolent  of  Stoke-Pogis,  and 
to  have  sauntered  where  Gray  himself  must  have  muttered 
his  verses  as  they  took  shape  gives  the  reader  a  certain 
sense  of  confidence  in  the  poet's  sincerity.  Gray  had  of 
late  been  much  exercised  about  Eton ;  to  see  a  place  so 
full  of  reminiscences,  and  yet  be  too  distant  to  have  news 
of  it,  this  was  provoking  to  his  fancy.  In  his  last  letter 
to  West  he  starts  the  reflection  that  he  developed  a  few 
months  later  in  the  Ode.  It  puzzled  him  to  think  that 
Lord  Sandwich  and  Lord  Halifax,  whom  he  could  remem- 
ber as  "  dirty  boys  playing  at  cricket,"  were  now  states- 
men, whilst,  "  as  for  me,  I  am  never  a  bit  the  older,  nor  the 
bigger,  nor  the  wiser  than  I  was  then,  no,  not  for  having 
been  beyond  the  sea."  Lord  Sandwich,  of  course,  as  all 
readers  of  lampoons  remember,  remained  Gray's  pet  aver- 
sion to  the  end  of  his  life,  the  type  to  him  of  the  man 
who,  without  manners,  or  parts,  or  character,  could  force 
his  way  into  power  by  the  sheer  insolence  of  wealth,  f  The 
Eton  Ode  was  inspired  by  the  regret  that  the  illusions  of 
boyhood,  the  innocence  that  comes  not  of  virtue  but  if  in- 
experience, the  sweetness  born  not  of  a  good  heart  but  of 
a  good  digestion,  the  elation  which  childish  spirits  give, 
and  which  owes  nothing  to  anger  or  dissipation,  that  these 
simple  qualities  cannot  be  preserved  through  life.^  Gray 
was,  or  thought  he  was,  "  never  a  bit  the  older  "  than  he 
was  at  Eton,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  world  would 
be  better  if  Lord  Sandwich  could  have  been  kept  forever 
in  the  same  infantile  simplicity.  *  This  description  of  the 
joyous  innocence  of  boyhood — a  theme  requiring,  indeed, 
the  optimism  of  a  Pangloss — has  never  been  surpassed  as 


«2  GRAY.  [chap. 

an  ex  parte  statement  on  the  roseate  and  ideal  side  of  the 
question.'!  That  the  view  of  ethics  is  quite  elementary,  and 
would  have  done  honour  to  the  experience  and  science  of 
one  of  Gray's  good  old  aunts,  |detracts  in  no  sense  from 
the  positive  beauty  of  the  poem  as  a  strain  of  reflection ; 
and  it  has  enjoyed  a  popularity  with  successive  generations 
which  puts  it  almost  outside  the  pale  of  verbal  criticism* 
When  a  short  ode  of  one  hundred  lines  has  enriched  our 
language  with  at  least  three  phrases  which  have  become 
part  and  parcel  of  our  daily  speech,  it  may  be  taken  for 
granted  that  it  is  very  admirably  worded.  Indeed,  the 
Eton  Ode  is  one  of  those  poems  which  have  suffered  from 
a  continued  excess  of  popularity,  and  its  famous  felicities, 
"  to  snatch  a  fearful  joy,"  "  regardless  of  their  doom,  the 
little  victims  play,"  "  where  ignorance  is  bliss,  'tis  folly  to 
be  wise,"  have  suffered  the  extreme  degradation  as  well  as 
the  loftiest  honour  which  attends  on  passages  of  national 
verse,  since  they  have  been  so  universally  extolled  that  they 
have  finally  become  commonplace  witticisms  to  the  mill- 
ion. It  is  well  to  take  the  stanza  in  which  such  a  phrase 
occurs  and  read  it  anew,  with  a  determination  to  forget  that 
one  of  its  lines  has  been  almost  effaced  in  vulgar  traffic : 

"  While  some  on  earnest  business  bent 

Their  murmuring  labours  ply 
'Gainst  graver  hours  that  bring  constraint 

To  sweeten  liberty, 
Some  bold  adventurers  disdain 
The  limits  of  their  little  reign, 

And  unknown  regions  dare  descry; 
Still  as  they  run  they  look  behind, 
They  hear  a  voice  in  every  wind, 

And  snatch  a  fearful  joy." 

Tt  is  only  in  the  second  stanza  of  the  Eton  Ode  that 
Gray  permits  himself  to  refer  to  the  constant  pressure  of 


in.]  FIRST  ENGLISH  POEMS.  63 

regret  for  his  lost  friend ;  the  fields  are  beloved  in  vain, 
and,  in  Wordsworth's  exquisite  phrase,  he  turns  to  share 
the  rapture — ah !  with  whom  ?  In  yet  one  other  poem 
composed  during  this  prolific  month  of  August,  1742,  that 
regret  serves  simply  to  throw  a  veil  of  serious  and  pathetic 
sentiment  over  the  tone  of  the  reflection.  The  Ode  on 
Adversity,  so  named  by  Gray  himself  and  by  his  first  edi- 
tor, Mason,  but  since  styled,  I  know  not  why,  the  Hymn  to 
Adversity,  is  remarkable  as  the  first  of  Gray's  poems  in 
which  he  shows  that  stateliness  of  movement  and  pomp  of 
allegorical  illustration  which  give  an  individuality  in  his 
mature  style.  No  English  poet,  except  perhaps  Milton  and 
Shelley,  has  maintained  the  same  severe  elevation  through- 
out a  long  lyrical  piece.  Perhaps  the  fragments  of  such 
lyrists  as  Simonides  gave  Gray  the  hint  of  this  pure  and 
cold  manner  of  writing.  The  shadowy  personages  of  alle- 
gory throng  around  us,  and  we  are  not  certain  that  we  dis- 
tinguish them  from  one  another.  The  indifferent  critic 
may  be  supposed  to  ask,  which  is  Prosperity  and  which  is 
Folly,  and  how  am  I  to  distinguish  them  from  the  Summer 
Friend  and  from  Thoughtless  Joy?  Adversity  herself  is 
an  abstraction  which  has  few  terrors  and  few  allurements 
for  us,  and  in  listening  to  the  address  made  to  her  by  the 
poet  we  are  apt  to  forget  her  in  our  appreciation  of  the 
balanced  rhythm  and  rich,  persuasive  sound : 

"  Wisdom,  in  sable  garb  arrayed, 

Immersed  in  rapt'rous  thought  profound ; 
And  Melancholy,  silent  maid, 

With  leaden  eye  that  loves  the  ground, 
Still  on  thy  solemn  steps  attend ; 
Warm  Charity,  the  general  friend, 
With  Justice,  to  herself  severe, 
And  Pity,  dropping  soft  the  sadly-pleasing  tear. 
4. 


64  GRAY.  [chap. 

"  0  gently  on  thy  suppliant's  head, 

Dread  goddess,  lay  thy  chast'ning  hand ! 

Not  in  thy  Gorgon  terrors  clad, 
Not  circled  with  the  vengeful  band 

(As  by  the  impious  thou  art  seen), 

With  thund'ring  voice,  and  threat'ning  mien, 
With  screaming  Horror's  funeral  cry, 

Despair,  and  fell  Disease,  and  ghastly  Poverty. 

"  Thy  form  benign,  0  goddess,  wear ; 
Thy  milder  influence  impart, 
Thy  philosophic  train  be  there, 

To  soften,  not  to  wound,  my  heart. 
The  gen'rous  spark  extinct  revive, 
Teach  me  to  love,  and  to  forgive, 
Exact  my  own  defects  to  scan, 
What  others  are  to  feel,  and  know  myself  a  man." 

This  last  stanza,  where  he  gets  free  from  the  allegorical 
personages,  is  undoubtedly  the  best ;  and  the  curious  coup- 
let about  the  "  generous  spark  "  seems  to  me  to  be  proba- 
bly a  reference  to  the  quarrel  with  Walpole.  If  this  be 
thought  fantastic,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Gray's  cir- 
cle of  experience  and  emotion  was  unusually  narrow.  To 
return  to  the  treatment  of  allegory  and  the  peculiar  style 
of  this  ode,  we  are  confronted  by  the  curious  fact  that  it 
seems  impossible  to  claim  for  these  qualities,  hitherto  un- 
observed in  English  poetry,  precedency  in  either  Gray  or 
Collins.  Actual  priority,  of  course,  belongs  to  Gray,  for 
Collins  wrote  nothing  of  a  serious  nature  till  1745  or 
1746  ;  but  his  Odes,  though  so  similar,  or  rather  so  analo- 
gous, to  Gray's  that  every  critic  has  considered  them  as 
holding  a  distinct  place  together  in  literature,  were  certain- 
ly not  in  any  way  inspired  by  Gray.  The  latter  published 
nothing  till  1747,  whereas  in  December,  1746,  Collins's 
precious  little  volume  saw  the  light. 


in.]  FIRST  ENGLISH  POEMS.  65 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Collins,  at  school  at  Win- 
chester until  1741,  at  college  at  Oxford  until  1744,  could 
have  seen  any  of  Gray's  verses,  which  had  not  then  begun 
to  circulate  in  MS.,  in  the  way  in  which  long  afterwards 
the  Elegy  and  the  Bard  passed  from  eager  hand  to  hand. 
We  shall  see  that  Gray  read  Collins  eventually,  but  with- 
out interest,  whilst  Collins  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
ever  conscious  of  Gray's  existence ;  there  was  no  mutual 
magnetic  attraction  between  the  two  poets,  and  we  must 
suppose  their  extraordinary  kinship  to  have  been  a  mere 
accident,  the  result  of  certain  forces  acting  simultaneously 
on  more  or  less  similar  intellectual  compounds.  There 
was  no  other  resemblance  between  them,  as  men,  than 
this  one  gift  of  clear,  pure,  Simonidean  song.  Collins 
was  simply  a  reed,  cut  short  and  notched  by  the  great 
god  Pan,  for  the  production  of  enchanting  flute-melodies 
at  intervals;  but  for  all  other  human  purposes  a  vain  and 
empty  thing  indeed.  In  Gray  the  song,  important  as  it 
was,  seemed  merely  one  phase  of  a  deep  and  consistent 
character,  of  a  brain  almost  universally  accomplished,  of 
a  man,  in  short,  and  not  of  a  mere  musical  instrument. 

One  more  work  of  great  importance  was  begun  at 
Stoke  in  the  autumn  of  1 742,  the  Elegy  wrote  in  a  Coun- 
try Church-yard.  It  is,  unfortunately,  impossible  to  say 
what  form  it  originally  took,  or  what  lines  or  thoughts 
now  existing  in  it  are  part  of  the  original  scheme.  We 
shall  examine  this  poem  at  length  when  we  reach  the 
period  of  Gray's  career  to  which  it  belongs  in  its  com- 
pleted form ;  but  as  the  question  is  often  asked,  and 
vaguely  answered,  where  was  the  Elegy  written,  it  may  at 
once  be  said  that  it  was  begun  at  Stoke  in  October  or  No- 
vember, 1742,  continued  at  Stoke  immediately  after  the 
funeral  of  Gray's  aunt,  Miss  Mary  Antrobus,  in  November, 


66  GRAY. .  [chap. 

1749,  and  finished  at  Cambridge  in  June,  1*750.  And  it 
may  here  be  remarked  as  a  very  singular  fact  that  the 
death  of  a  valued  friend  seems  to  have  been  the  stimulus 
of  greatest  efficacy  in  rousing  Gray  to  the  composition  of 
poetry,  and  did  in  fact  excite  him  to  the  completion  of 
most  of  his  important  poems.  He  was  a  man  who  had  a 
very  slender  hold  on  life  himself,  who  walked  habitually 
in  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death,  and  whose  periods 
of  greatest  vitality  were  those  in  which  bereavement 
proved  to  him  that,  melancholy  as  he  was,  even  he  had 
something  to  lose  and  to  regret. 

It  is,  therefore,  perhaps  more  than  a  strong  impression 
that  makes  me  conjecture  the  beginning  of  the  Elegy 
wrote  in  a  Country  Church-yard  to  date  from  the  funeral 
of  Gray's  uncle,  Jonathan  Rogers,  who  died  at  Stoke- 
Pogis  on  the  31st  of  October,  1742,  and  who  was  buried 
with  the  Antrobus  family  in  the  church  of  the  neighbour- 
ing parish  of  Burnham.  An  ingenious  Latin  inscription 
to  him,  in  a  marble  tablet  in  the  church  of  that  name, 
has  always  been  ascribed  to  Gray  himself.  Rogers  died  at 
the  age  of  sixty-five,  having  spent  thirty-two  years  in  un- 
disturbed felicity  with  his  wife,  born  Anna  Antrobus,  who 
survived  him  till  near  the  end  of  her  celebrated  nephew's 
life.  The  death  of  Mr.  Rogers  completely  altered  Gray's 
prospects.  Mrs.  Rogers  appears  to  have  been  left  with  a 
very  small  fortune,  just  enough  to  support  her  and  her 
sisters,  Mrs.  Gray  and  Miss  Antrobus,  in  genteel  comfort, 
if  they  shared  a  house  together,  and  had  no  extraneous 
expenses.  The  ladies  from  Cornhill  accordingly  came 
down  to  West  End  House  at  Stoke,  and  there  the  three 
sisters  lived  until  their  respective  deaths.  But  Gray's 
dream  of  a  life  of  lettered  ease  was  at  an  end ;  he  saw 
that  what  would  support  these  ladies  would  leave  but  lit- 


ni]  FIRST  ENGLISH  POEMS.  67 

tie  margin  for  him.  His  temperament  and  his  mode  of 
study  shut  him  out  from  every  energetic  profession.  He 
was  twenty-five  years  of  age,  and  hitherto  had  not  so 
much  as  begun  any  serious  study  of  the  law,  for  which 
his  mother  still  imagined  him  to  be  preparing.  Only  one 
course  was  open  to  him,  namely,  to  return  to  Cambridge, 
where  living  was  very  cheap,  and  to  reside  in  college, 
spending  his  vacations  quietly  at  Stoke-Pogis.  As  Mason 
puts  it,  "he  was  too  delicate  to  hurt  two  persons  for 
whom  he  had  so  tender  an  affection  by  peremptorily  de- 
claring his  real  intentions,  and  therefore  changed,  or  pre- 
tended to  change,  the  line  of  his  study."  Henceforward, 
until  1759,  his  whole  life  was  a  regular  oscillation  be- 
tween Stoke  and  Cambridge,  varied  only  by  occasional 
visits  to  London.  The  first  part  of  his  life  was  now  over. 
At  twenty-five  Gray  becomes  a  middle-aged  man,  and 
loses,  among  the  libraries  of  the  University,  his  last  pre- 
tensions to  physical  elasticity.  From  this  time  forward 
we  find  that  his  ailments,  his  melancholy,  his  reserve,  and 
his  habit  of  drowning  consciousness  in  perpetual  study, 
have  taken  firm  hold  upon  him,  and  he  begins  to  plunge 
into  an  excess  of  reading,  treating  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  as  a  narcotic.  In  the  winter  of  1742  he  pro- 
ceeded to  Peterhouse,  and  taking  his  bachelor's  degree  in 
Civil  Law,  was  forthwith  installed  as  a  resident  of  that 
college. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

LIFE     AT     CAMBRIDGE. 

Gray  took  up  his  abode  at  Peterhouse,  in  the  room  near- 
est the  road  on  the  second  floor  on  the  north  side,  a  room 
which  still  exists,  and  which  commands  a  fine  view  of 
Pembroke  College,  further  east,  on  the  opposite  side  of 
Trumpington  Street.  It  would  seem,  indeed,  that  Gray's 
eyes  and  thoughts  were  forever  away  from  home,  and 
paying  a  visit  to  the  society  across  the  road.  His  letters 
are  full  of  minute  discussions  of  what  is  going  on  at  Pem- 
broke, but  never  a  word  of  Peterhouse ;  indeed,  so  natu- 
rally and  commonly  does  he  discuss  the  politics  of  the 
former  college,  often  without  naming  it,  that  all  his  biog- 
raphers— except,  of  course,  Mason — seem  to  have  taken 
for  granted  that  he  was  describing  Peterhouse.  Oddly 
enough,  Mason,  who  might  have  explained  this  circum- 
stance in  half  a  dozen  words,  does  not  appear  to  have 
noticed  the  fact,  so  natural  did  it  seem  to  him  to  read 
about  events  which  went  on  in  his  own  college  of  Pem- 
broke. Nor  is  it  explained  why  Gray  never  became  a 
Fellow  of  Peterhouse.  In  all  the  correspondence  of  Gray 
I  have  only  noted  one  solitary  instance  in  which  he  has 
mentioned  a  Petrusian ;  on  this  one  occasion  he  does 
name  the  Master,  J.  "Whalley,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Ches- 
ter, in  connexion  with  an  anecdote  which  does  more  hon- 


chap.  iv.J  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  69 

our  to  him  as  a  kind  old  soul  than  as  a  disciplinarian. 
But  all  Gray's  friends,  and  enemies,  and  interests  were 
centered  in  Pembroke,  and  he  shows  such  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  all  the  cabals  and  ridiculous  little  intrigues 
which  thrilled  the  common-room  of  that  college,  as  re- 
quires an  explanation  that  now  can  never  be  given.  These 
first  years  of  his  residence  are  the  most  obscure  in  his 
whole  career.  It  must  be  remembered  that  of  his  three 
most  intimate  correspondents  one,  West,  was  dead ;  an- 
other, Walpole,  estranged ;  and  the  third,  Wharton,  a  resi- 
dent in  Cambridge  like  himself,  and  therefore  too  near  at 
hand  to  be  written  to.  On  the  27th  of  December,  1742, 
a  few  years  after  his  arrival  at  the  University,  he  wrote  a 
letter  to  Dr.  Wharton,  which  has  been  preserved,  and  his 
Hymn  to  Ignorance,  Mason  tells  us,  dates  from  the  same 
time.  But  after  this  he  entirely  disappears  from  us  for  a 
couple  of  years,  a  few  legends  of  the  direction  taken  by 
his  studies  and  his  schemes  of  literary  work  being  the 
only  glimpses  we  get  of  him. 

But  although  Gray  tells  us  nothing  about  his  own  col- 
lege, it  is  still  possible  to  form  a  tolerably  distinct  idea 
of  the  society  with  whom  he  moved  at  Pembroke.  The 
Master,  Dr.  Roger  Long,  was  a  man  of  parts,  but  full  of 
eccentricities,  and  gifted  with  a  very  disagreeable  temper. 
He  was  a  species  of  poetaster,  oddly  associated  in  verse,  at 
different  extremes  of  his  long  life,  with  Laurence  Eusden, 
the  poet  laureate,  and  the  great  Erasmus  Darwin.  When 
Gray  settled  in  the  University,  Roger  Long  was  sixty-two 
years  of  age,  had  been  Master  of  Pembroke  nine  years, 
and,  after  being  appointed  Lowndes  Professor  of  Astron- 
omy in  1750,  was  to  survive  until  1770,  dying  in  his 
ninety-first  year.  He  was  fond  of  exercising  his  inven- 
tion on  lumbering  constructions,  which  provoked  the  ridi- 


70  GRAY.  [chap. 

cule  of  young  wits  like  Gray  ;  such  as  a  sort  of  orrery 
which  he  built  in  the  north-eastern  corner  of  the  inner 
court  of  Pembroke  ;  and  a  still  more  remarkable  water- 
velocipede,  upon  which  Dr.  Long  was  wont  to  splash 
about  in  Pembroke  basin,  "  like  a  wild  goose  at  play," 
heedless  of  mocking  undergraduates.  This  eccentric  per- 
sonage was  the  object  of  much  observation  on  the  part  of 
Gray,  who  frequently  mentioned  him  in  his  letters,  and 
was  delighted  when  any  new  absurdity  gave  him  an  op- 
portunity of  writing  to  his  correspondents  about  "  the  high 
and  mighty  Prince  Roger  surnamed  the  Long,  Lord  of  the 
great  Zodiac,  the  glass  Uranium,  and  the  Chariot  that  goes 
without  horses."  As  the  astronomer  grew  older  he  more 
and  more  lost  his  authority  with  the  Fellows,  and  Gray 
describes  scenes  of  absolute  rebellion  which  are,  I  believe, 
recorded  by  no  other  historian.  Gray  was,  undoubtedly, 
in  possession  of  information  denied  to  the  rest  of  the 
world.  Part  of  this  information  came,  we  cannot  doubt, 
from  Dr.  Wharton,  and  part  from  another  intimate  friend 
of  Gray's,  William  Trollope,  who  had  taken  his  degree  in 
1730,  and  who  was  one  of  the  senior  Fellows  of  Pembroke. 
Another  excellent  friend  of  Gray's,  also  a  leading  man  at 
Pembroke,  was  the  gentle  and  refined  Dr.  James  Brown, 
who  eventually  succeeded  Long  in  the  Mastership,  and  in 
whose  arms  Gray  died.  Outside  this  little  Pembroke  cir- 
cle Gray  had  few  associates.  He  knew  Conyers  Middle- 
ton  very  well,  and  seems  to  have  gained,  a  little  later, 
while  haunting  the  rich  library  of  Emmanuel  College,  the 
acquaintance  of  a  man  whose  influence  on  him  was  dis- 
tinctly hurtful,  the  satellite  of  Warburton,  Richard  Hurd, 
long  afterwards  Bishop  of  Worcester.  But  his  association 
with  Conyers  Middleton,  certainly  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able men  then  moving  in  the  University,  amounted  almost 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  71 

to  friendship.  They  probably  met  nearly  every  day,  Mid- 
dleton  being  Librarian  of  Trinity.  There  was  much  that 
Gray  would  find  sympathetic  in  the  broad  theology  of 
Middleton,  who  had  won  his  spurs  by  attacking  the  deists 
from  ground  almost  as  sceptical  as  their  own,  yet  strictly 
within  the  pale  of  orthodoxy ;  nor  would  the  irony  and 
free  thought  of  a  champion  of  the  Church  of  England  be 
shocking  to  Gray,  whose  own  tenets  were  at  this  time  no 
less  broad  than  his  hatred  of  an  open  profession  of  deism 
was  pronounced.  Gray's  feeling  in  religion  seems  to  have 
been  one  of  high  and  dry  objection  to  enthusiasm,  or 
change,  or  subversion.  He  was  willing  to  admit  a  certain 
breadth  of  conjecture,  so  long  as  the  forms  of  orthodoxy 
were  preserved,  but  he  objected  excessively  to  any  attempt 
to  tamper  with  those  forms,  collecting  Shaftesbury,  Vol- 
taire, Rousseau,  and  Hume  under  one  general  category  of 
abhorrence.  As  he  says,  in  a  cancelled  stanza  of  one  of 
his  poems — 

"  No  more,  with  reason  and  thyself  at  strife, 
Give  anxious  cares  and  endless  wishes  room ; 
But  through  the  cool,  sequestered  vale  of  life 
Pursue  the  silent  tenour  of  thy  doom  " — 

an  attitude  which  would  not  preclude  a  good  deal  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  curious  speculations  of  Conyers  Middleton. 
There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that,  in  spite  of  a  few  com- 
panions of  tins  class,  most  of  them,  like  Middleton,  much 
older  than  himself,  he  found  Cambridge  exceedingly  dreary. 
He  talks  in  one  of  his  letters  of  "  the  strong  attachment, 
or  rather  allegiance,  which  I  and  all  here  owe  to  our  sov- 
ereign lady  and  mistress,  the  president  of  presidents,  and 
head  of  heads  (if  I  may  be  permitted  to  pronounce  her 
name,  that  ineffable  Octogrammaton),  the  power  of  Lazi- 
p      4*  29 


72  GRAY.  [chap. 

ness.  You  must  know  that  she  has  been  pleased  to  ap- 
point me  (in  preference  to  so  many  old  servants  of  hers, 
who  had  spent  their  whole  lives  in  qualifying  themselves 
for  the  office)  Grand  Picker  of  Straws  and  Push-pin 
Player  in  ordinary  to  her  Supinity."  This  in  1^44,  and 
the  same  note  had  been  struck  two  years  earlier  in  his 
curiously  splenetic  Hxjmii  to  Ignorance,  ':  '2  ■  • 

"  Hail,  horrors,  hail !  ye  ever  gloomy  bowers, 
Ye  Gothic  fanes,  and  antiquated  towers,  ' 
Where  rushy  Camus'  slowly-winding  flood 
Perpetual  draws  his  humid  train  of  mud : 
Glad  I  revisit  thy  neglected  reign. 
0  take  me  to  thy  peaceful  shade  again." 

This  atmosphere  of  apathy  and  ignorance  was  by  no 
means  favourable  to  the  composition  of  poetry.  It  was, 
indeed,  absolutely  fatal  to  it,  and  being  at  liberty  to  write 
odes  any  hour  of  any  day  completely  took  away  from  the 
poet  the  inclination  to  compose  them  at  all.  The  flow  of 
verse  which  had  been  so  full  and  constant  in  1742  ceased 
abruptly  and  entirely,  and  his  thoughts  turned  in  a  wholly 
fresh  direction.  He  gave  himself  up  almost  exclusively 
for  the  first  four  or  five  years  to  a  consecutive  study  of 
the  whole  existing  literature  of  ancient  Greece.  If  he  had 
seen  cause  to  lament  the  deadness  of  classical  enterprise  at 
Cambridge  when  he  was  an  undergraduate,  this  lethargy 
had  become  still  more  universal  since  the  death  of  Bentley 
and  Snape.  Gray  insisted,  almost  in  solitude,  on  the  ne- 
cessity of  persistence  in  the  cultivation  of  Greek  literature, 
and  he  forms  the  link  between  the  school  of  humanity 
which  flourished  in  Cambridge  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  that  of  which  Porson  was  to  be 
the  representative. 

One  of  Gray's  earliest  schemes  was  a  critical  text  of 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  73 

Strabo,  an  author  of  whom  he  knew  no  satisfactory  edi- 
tion. Amongst  the  Pembroke  MSS.  may  still  be  found  his 
painstaking  and  copious  notes  collected  for  this  purpose, 
and  Mason  possessed  in  Gray's  handwriting  "  a  great  num- 
ber of  geographical  disquisitions,  particularly  with  respect 
to  that  part  of  Asia  which  compreheuds  Persia  and  India ; 
concerning  the  ancient  and  modern  names  and  divisions 
of  which  extensive  countries  his  notes  are  very  copious." 
This  edition  of  Strabo  never  came  to  the  birth,  and  the 
same  has  to  be  said  of  his  projected  Plato,  the  notes  for 
every  section  of  which  were  in  existence  when  Mason  came 
to  examine  his  papers.  Another  labour  over  which  he  toil- 
ed in  vain  was  a  text  of  the  Greek  Anthology,  with  trans- 
lations of  each  separate  epigram  into  Latin  elegiac  verse,  a 
task  on  which  he  wasted  months  of  valuable  time,  and 
which  he  then  abandoned.  His  MS.,  however,  of  this  last- 
mentioned  work  came  into  his  executors'  hands,  copied 
out  as  if  for  the  press,  with  the  addition,  even,  of  a  very 
full  index,  and  it  is  a  little  surprising  that  Mason  should 
not  have  hastened  to  oblige  the  world  of  classical  students 
with  a  work  which  would  have  had  a  value  at  that  time 
that  it  could  not  be  said  to  possess  nowadays.  Lord 
Chesterfield  confidently  "  recommends  the  Greek  epigrams 
to  the  supreme  contempt "  of  his  precious  son,  and  in  so 
doing  gauged  rightly  enough  the  taste  of  the  age.  It 
would  seem  that  Gray  had  the  good-sense  to  enjoy  the 
delicious  little  poems  of  Meleager  and  his  fellow-singers, 
but  had  not  moral  energy  enough  to  insist  on  forcing  them 
upon  the  attention  of  the  world.  He  lamented,  too,  the 
neglect  into  which  Aristotle  had  fallen,  and  determined  to 
restore  him  to  the  notice  of  English  scholars.  As  in  the 
previous  cases,  however,  his  intentions  remained  unfulfilled, 
and  we  turn  with  pleasure  from  the  consideration  of  all 


"74  GRAY.  [chap. 

this  melancholy  waste  of  energy  and  learning.  It  is  hard 
to  conceive  of  a  sadder  irony  on  the  career  of  a  scholar  of 
Gray's  genius  and  accomplishment  than  is  given  by  the 
dismal  contents  of  the  so-called  second  volume  of  his 
Works,  published  by  Mathias  in  1814,  fragments  and  jot- 
tings which  bear  the  same  relation  to  literature  that  dough 
bears  to  bread. 

The  unfortunate  difference  with  Horace  Walpole  came 
to  a  close  in  the  winter  of  1744.  A  lady,  probably  Mrs. 
Conyers  Middleton,  made  peace  between  the  friends.  Wal- 
pole expressed  a  desire  that  Gray  would  write  to  him,  and 
as  Gray  was  passing  through  London,  on  his  way  from 
Cambridge  to  Stoke,  in  the  early  part  of  November,  a 
meeting  came  off.  The  poet  wrote  Walpole  a  note  as 
soon  as  he  arrived,  "  and  immediately  received  a  very  civil 
answer."  Horace  Walpole  was  then  living  in  the  minis- 
terial neighbourhood  of  Arlington  Street,  and  thither  on 
the  following  evening  Gray  went  to  visit  him.  Gray's  ac- 
count to  Wharton  of  the  interview  is  entertaining :  "  I  was 
somewhat  abashed  at  his  confidence ;  he  came  to  meet  me, 
kissed  me  on  both  sides  with  all  the  ease  of  one  who  re- 
ceives an  acquaintance  just  come  out  of  the  country,  squat- 
ted me  into  a  fauteuil,  began  to  talk  of  the  town,  and  this 
and  that  and  t'other,  and  continued  with  little  interruption 
for  three  hours,  when  I  took  my  leave,  very  indifferently 
pleased,  but  treated  with  monstrous  good  -  breeding.  I 
supped  with  him  next  night,  as  he  desired.  Ashton  was 
there,  whose  formalities  tickled  me  inwardly,  for  he,  I 
found,  was  to  be  angry  about  the  letter  I  had  wrote  him. 
However,  in  going  home  together  our  hackney-coach  jum- 
bled us  up  into  a  sort  of  reconciliation.  .  .  .  Next  morn- 
ing I  breakfasted  alone  with  Mr.  Walpole ;  when  me  had 
all  the  eclaircissement  I  ever  expected,  and  I  left  him  mu?£ 


iv. J  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  75 

1  tetter  satisfied  than  I  had  been  hitherto."  Gray's  pride 
we  see  struggling  against  a  very  hearty  desire  in  Walpole 
to  let  by-gones  be  by-gones ;  the  stately  little  poet,  however, 
was  not  able  to  hold  out  against  so  many  courteous  seduc- 
tions, and  he  gradually  returned  to  his  old  intimacy  and 
affection  for  Walpole.  It  is  nevertheless  doubtful  whether 
he  ever  became  so  fond  of  the  latter  as  Walpole  was  of 
him.  He  accepted  the  homage,  however,  to  the  end  of 
his  days,  and  was  more  admired,  perhaps,  by  Horace  Wal- 
pole, and  for  a  longer  period,  than  any  other  person. 

Perhaps  in  consequence  of  the  "  eclaircissement "  with 
Walpole,  Gray  began  at  this  time  a  correspondence  with 
Mr.  Chute  and  Mr.  Whithead,  the  gentlemen  with  whom 
he  had  spent  some  months  in  Venice.  Chute  was  a  Hamp- 
shire squire,  a  dozen  years  senior  to  Gray  and  Walpole, 
but  a  great  admirer  of  them  both,  and  they  both  wrote  to 
him  some  of  their  brightest  letters.  Chute  was  what  our 
Elizabethan  forefathers  called  "  Italianate;"  he  sympathized 
with  Gray's  tastes  in  music  and  statuary,  and  vowed  that 
life  was  not  worth  living  north  of  the  Alps,  and  spent 
the  greater  part  of  his  time  in  Casa  Ambrosio,  Sir  Hor- 
ace Mann's  house  in  Florence.  He  was  an  accomplished 
person,  who  played  and  sang,  and  turned  a  neat  copy 
of  verses,  and  altogether  was  a  very  agreeable  exception 
amongst  country  gentlemen.  He  lived  on  until  1776, 
carefully  preserving  the  letters  he  had  interchanged  with 
his  sprightly  friends. 

About  this  time  (May  30,  1744)  Pope  had  died,  and 
both  Gray  and  Walpole  refer  frequently  to  the  circum- 
stance in  their  letters.  It  seems  that  Gray  had  had  at 
least  one  interview  with  the  great  poet  of  the  age  before 
him,  an  interview  the  date  of  which  it  would  be  curious 
to  ascertain.     Gray's  words  are  interesting.     He  writes  to 


76  GRAY.  [chap. 

Walpole  (Feb.  3, 1746),  referring  probably  to  the  scandals 
about  Atossa  and  the  Patriot  King :  "  I  can  say  no  more 
for  Mr.  Pope,  for  what  you  keep  in  reserve  may  be  worse 
than  all  the  rest.  It  is  natural  to  wish  the  finest  writer — 
one  of  them — we  ever  had  should  be  an  honest  man.  It 
is  for  the  interest  even  of  that  virtue,  whose  friend  he 
professed  himself,  and  whose  beauties  he  sung,  that  he 
should  not  be  found  a  dirty  animal.  But,  however,  this 
is  Mr.  Warburton's  business,  not  mine,  who  may  scribble 
his  pen  to  the  stumps  and  all  in  vain,  if  these  facts  are 
so.  It  is  not  from  what  he  told  me  about  himself  that  I 
thought  well  of  him,  but  from  a  humanity  and  goodness 
of  heart,  ay,  and  greatness  of  mind,  that  runs  through  his 
private  correspondence,  not  less  apparent  than  are  a  thou- 
sand little  vanities  and  weaknesses  mixed  with  those  good 
qualities,  for  nobody  ever  took  him  for  a  philosopher." 
There  exists  a  book  in  which  Pope  has  written  his  own 
name,  and  Gray  his  underneath,  with  a  date  in  Pope's 
lifetime.  Evidently  there  had  been  personal  intercourse 
between  them,  in  which  Walpole  may  have  had  a  part; 
for  the  latter  said,  very  late  in  his  own  career,  "  Remem- 
ber, I  have  lived  with  Gray  and  seen  Pope." 

In  1744  appeared  two  poems  of  some  importance  in 
the  history  of  eighteenth  century  literature,  Akenside's 
Pleasures  of  the  Imagination  and  Armstrong's  Art  of 
Preserving  Health.  Gray  read  them  instantly,  for  the 
authors  were  friends  of  his  friend  Wharton.  The  first 
he  found  often  obscure  and  even  unintelligible,  but  yet  in 
many  respects  admirable;  and  he  checked  himself  in  the 
act  of  criticising  Akenside — "  a  very  ingenious  man,  worth 
fifty  of  myself."  For  Armstrong  he  showed  less  interest. 
The  reading  of  these  and  other  poems,  a  fresh  beat  of  the 
pulse  of  English  Poetry  in  her  fainting-fit,  set  him  think 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  11 

ing  of  his  own  neglected  epic,  the  Be  Principiis  Coyitandi, 
or  "  Master  Tommy  Lucretius,"  as  he  nicknamed  it.  This 
unwieldy  production,  however,  could  not  be  encouraged  to 
flourish :  "  'tis  but  a  puleing  chitt,"  says  its  author,  and 
Mason  tells  us  that  about  this  time  the  posthumous  pub- 
lication of  the  Anti- Lucretius  of  the  Cardinal  Melchior 
de  Polinnac,  a  book  lone;  awaited  and  received  at  last  with 
great  disappointment,  made  Gray  decide  to  let  Locke  and 
the  Origin  of  Ideas  alone.  It  may  be  noted  that  in  July, 
1745,  Gray  had  serious  thoughts,  which  came  to  nothing, 
of  moving  over  from  Peterhouse  to  Trinity  Hall. 

We  get  glimpses  of  him  now  and  then  from  his  letters. 
He  does  not  entirely  forget  the  pleasures  of  "  strumming," 
he  tells  Chute ;  "  I  look  at  my  music  now  and  then,  that 
I  may  not  forget  it;"  and  in  September,  1746,  he  has 
been  writing  "  a  few  autumnal  verses,"  the  exact  nature 
of  which  it  is  now  impossible  to  specify.  In  August  of 
the  same  year  he  had  been  in  London,  spending  his  morn- 
ings with  Walpole  in  Arlington  Street,  and  his  afternoons 
at  the  trial  of  the  Jacobite  Lords.  His  account  of  Kil- 
marnock and  Cromartie  is  vivid,  and  not  as  unsympathetic 
as  it  might  be.  Now,  as  for  many  years  to  come,  Gray 
usually  went  up  to  town  in  the  middle  of  June,  saw  what 
was  to  be  seen,  proceeded  to  Stoke,  and  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge in  September.  Late  in  August,  1746,  Horace  Wal- 
pole took  a  house  within  the  precincts  of  the  Castle  of 
Windsor,  and  Gray  at  Stoke  found  this  very  convenient, 
for  the  friends  were  able  to  spend  one  day  of  each  week 
together.  In  May,  1747,  Walpole  rented,  and  afterwards 
bought,  that  estate  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Thames 
which  he  has  made  famous  under  the  name  of  Strawberry 
Hill,  and  in  future  Gray  scarcely  ever  passed  a  long  va- 
cation without  spending  some  of  his  time  there.     It  was 


78  GRAY.  [chap 

now  that  his  first  poem  was  published.  Walpole  per- 
suaded him  to  allow  Dodsley  to  print  the  Ode  on  a  Dis- 
tant Prospect  of  Eton  College,  and  it  accordingly  appeared 
anonymously,  in  the  summer  of  1747,  as  a  thin  folio  pam- 
phlet. In  the  autumn  of  this  same  year,  whilst  Gray  was 
Walpole's  guest  at  Strawberry  Hill,  he  sat  for  the  most 
pleasing,  though  the  most  feminine,  of  his  portraits,  that 
by  John  Giles  Eckhardt,  a  German  who  had  come  over 
with  Vanloo,  and  to  whom  Walpole  had  addressed  his 
poem  of  The  Beauties.  The  Eton  Ode  fell  perfectly  still- 
born, in  spite  of  Walpole's  enthusiasm ;  even  less  observed 
by  the  critics  of  the  hour  than  Collins's  little  volume  of 
Odes,  which  had  appeared  six  months  earlier.  We  may 
observe  that  Gray  was  now  thirty  years  of  age,  and  not 
only  absolutely  unknown,  but  not  in  the  least  persuaded 
in  himself  that  he  ought  to  be  known. 

It  seems  to  have  been  about  this  time  that  the  remark- 
able interview  took  place  between  Gray  and  Hogarth. 
The  great  painter,  now  in  his  fiftieth  year,  had  just  reach- 
ed the  summit  of  his  reputation  by  completing  his  Mar- 
riage a  la  Mode,  which  Gray  admired  like  the  rest  of  the 
world.  The  vivacious  Walpole  thought  that  he  would 
bring  these  interesting  men  together,  and  accordingly  ar- 
ranged a  little  dinner,  from  which  he  anticipated  no  small 
intellectual  diversion.  Unfortunately,  Hogarth  was  more 
surly  and  egotistical  than  usual,  and  Gray  was  plunged  in 
one  of  his  fits  of  melancholy  reserve,  so  that  Walpole  had 
to  rely  entirely  upon  his  own  flow  of  spirits  to  prevent 
absolute  silence,  and  vowed  at  the  end  of  the  repast  that 
he  had  never  been  so  dull  in  his  life.  To  show,  however, 
how  Gray  could  sparkle  when  the  cloud  happened  to  rise 
from  off  his  spirits,  we  may  quote  entire  the  delightful 
letter  to  Walpole,  in  which  one  of  the  brightest  of  his 
lesser  poems  first  appeared : 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  73 

"Cambridge,  March,  1, 1747. 
"  As  one  ought  to  be  particularly  careful  to  avoid  blunders  in  a 
compliment  of  condolence,  it  would  be  a  sensible  satisfaction  to  me, 
before  I  testify  my  sorrow,  and  the  sincere  part  I  take  in  your  mis- 
fortune, to  know  for  certain  who  it  is  I  lament.  I  knew  Zara  and 
Selirna  (Selima,  was  it?  or  Fatiina  ?),  or  rather  I  knew  them  both  to- 
gether ;  for  I  cannot  justly  say  which  was  which.  Then  as  to  your 
'  handsome  Cat,'  the  name  you  distinguish  her  by,  I  am  no  less  at  a 
loss,  as  well  knowing  one's  handsome  cat  is  always  the  cat  one  loves 
best ;  or  if  one  be  alive  and  one  dead,  it  is  usually  the  latter  that  is 
the  handsomest.  Besides,  if  the  point  were  never  so  clear,  I  hope 
you  do  not  think  me  so  ill-bred  or  so  imprudent  as  to  forfeit  all  my 
interest  in  the  survivor ;  oh  no  !  I  would  rather  seem  to  mistake,  and 
imagine  to  be  sure  it  must  be  the  tabby  one  that  had  met  with  this 
sad  accident.  Till  this  matter  is  a  little  better  determined,  you  will 
excuse  me  if  I  do  not  begin  to  cry — 

•Tempus  inane  peto,  requiem,  epatiumque  doloriB.' 

Which  interval  is  the  more  convenient,  as  it  gives  me  time  to  rejoice 
with  you  on  your  new  honours  [Walpole  had  just  been  elected  F.R.S.]. 
This  is  only  a  beginning ;  I  reckon  next  week  we  shall  hear  you  are 
a  Freemason,  or  a  Gormagon  at  least.  Heigh-ho !  I  feel  (as  you  to 
be  sure  have  long  since)  that  I  have  very  little  to  say,  at  least  in 
prose.  Somebody  will  be  the  better  for  it ;  I  do  not  mean  you,  but 
your  Cat,  feue  Mademoiselle  Selime,  whom  I  am  about  to  immortalize 
for  one  week  or  fortnight,  as  follows  : 

*"Twas  on  a  lofty  vase's  side 
Where  China's  gayest  art  had  dyed 

The  aznre  flowers  that  blow, 
The  pensive  Selima  reclined, 
Demurest  of  the  tabby  kind, 
Qaz'd  on  the  lake  below. 

"Her  conscious  tail  her  joy  declar'd : 
The  fair,  round  face,  the  showy  beard, 

The  velvet  of  her  paws, 
Her  coat  that  with  the  tortoise  vies, 
Her  ears  of  jet,  and  emerald  eyes, 
She  saw ;  and  purred  applause. 

•'Still  had  she  gaz'd  j  but  midst  the  tide 
Two  beauteous  forms  were  seen  to  glide, 


80  GRAY.  [chap. 

The  Genii  of  the  stream  ; 
Their  scaly  armour's  Tyrian  hue, 
Through  richest  purple,  to  the  view 

Betray'd  a  goldeu  gleam. 

"The  hapless  nymph  with  wonder  saw: 
A  whisker  first,  and  then  a  claw, 

With  many  an  ardent  wish. 
She  6tretch'd,  in  vain,  to  reach  the  prize. 
What  female  heart  can  gold  despise? 

What  Cat's  averse  to  fish  ? 

"Presumptuous  maid  !    With  looks  intent 
Again  she  stretched,  again  she  bent, 

Nor  knew  the  gulf  between. 
(Malignant  Fate  sat  by,  and  smil'd.) 
The  slipp'ry  verge  her  feet  beguil'd, 

She  tumbled  headlong  in. 

"Eight  times  emerging  from  the  flood, 
She  mewed  to  ev'ry  wat'ry  god 

Some  speedy  aid  to  send. 
No  dolphin  came,  no  Nereid  stirr'd, 
No  cruel  Tom  nor  Harry  heard — 
What  favourite  has  a  friend? 

"From  hence,  ye  beauties,  undeceiv'd, 
Know  one  false  step  is  ne'er  retriev'd, 

And  be  with  caution  bold. 
Not  all  that  tempts  your  wand'ring  eyes 
And  heedless  hearts  is  lawful  prize, 
Nor  all,  that  glisters,  gold. 

"  There's  a  poem  for  you  ;  it  is  rather  too  long  for  an  epitaph. " 

It  is  rather  too  long  for  a  quotation,  also,  but  the  reader 
may  find  some  entertainment  in  seeing  so  familiar  a  poem 
restored  to  its  original  readings.  Johnson's  comment  on 
this  piece  is  more  unfortunate  than  usual.  He  calls  it 
"  a  trifle,  but  not  a  happy  trifle."  Later  critics  have  been 
unanimous  in  thinking  it  one  of  the  happiest  of  all  trifles ; 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  its  ease  and  lightness  it 
shows  that  Gray  had  been  reading  Gresset  and  Piron  to 
ad  vantage,  and  that  he  remembered  the  gay  suppers  with 


it.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  8] 

Mile.  Quinault.  A  French  poet  of  the  neatest  class,  how- 
ever, would  certainly  Lave  avoided  the  specious  little  error 
detected  by  Johnson  in  the  last  line,  and  would  not  have 
laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  supposing  that  what 
cats  really  like  is,  not  gold-fish,  but  gold  itself. 

We  must  return,  however,  to  the  dreary  days  in  which 
Gray  divided  his  leisure  from  Greek  literature  between 
drinking  tar-water,  on  the  recommendation  of  Berkeley's 
Siris,  and  observing  the  extraordinary  quarrelling  and 
bickering  which  went  on  in  the  combination-room  at 
Pembroke.  These  dissensions  reached  a  climax  in  the 
summer  of  1746.  The  cause  of  the  Master,  Dr.  Roger 
Long,  was  supported  by  a  certain  Dr.  Andrews,  whilst 
James  Brown,  popularly  styled  Obadiah  Fusk,  led  the 
body  of  the  Fellows,  with  whom  Gray  sympathized.  "  Mr. 
Brown  wants  nothing  but  a  foot  in  height  and  his  own 
hair  to  make  him  a  little  old  Roman,"  we  are  told  in  Au- 
gust of  that  year,  and  has  been  so  determined  that  the 
Master  talks  of  calling  in  the  Attorney-general  to  decide. 
Even  in  the  Long  Vacation,  Fellows  of  Pembroke  can  talk 
of  nothing  else,  and  "  tremble  while  they  speak."  Tuthill, 
for  some  occult  reason,  is  threatened  with  the  loss  of  his 
fellowship,  and  Gray  at  Stoke,  in  September,  1746,  will 
hurry  to  Cambridge  at  any  moment,  so  as  not  to  be  ab- 
sent during  the  Pembroke  audit. 

All  this  time  not  one  word  is  said  of  his  own  college. 
Nor  was  he  always  so  anxious  to  return  to  Cambridge. 
In  the  winter  of  1746  he  had  a  very  bright  spell  of  en- 
joyment in  London.  "  I  have  been  in  town,"  he  says  to 
Wharton  (December  11th),  "flaunting  about  at  public 
places  of  all  kinds  with  my  two  Italianized  friends  [Chute 
and  Whithead].  The  world  itself  has  some  attractions 
in  it  to  a  solitary  of  six  years'  standing ;  and  agreeable, 


82  GRAY.  [chap. 

well-meaning  people  of  sense  (thank  Heaven  there  are  so 
few  of  them)  are  my  peculiar  magnet ;  it  is  no  wonder, 
then,  if  I  felt  some  reluctance  at  parting  with  them  s-o 
soon,  or  if  my  spirits,  when  I  return  to  my  cell,  should 
sink  for  a  time,  not  indeed  to  storm  or  tempest,  but  a 
good  deal  below  changeable."  He  was  considerably  trou- 
bled by  want  of  money  at  this  time ;  he  had  been  to  town 
partly  to  sell  off  a  little  stock  to  pay  an  old  debt,  and  had 
found  the  rate  of  exchange  so  low  that  he  would  have  lost 
twelve  per  cent.  He  was  saved  from  this  necessity  by  a 
timely  loan  from  Wharton.  He  spent  his  leisure  at  Christ- 
mas in  making  a  great  chronological  table,  the  form  of 
which  long  afterwards  suggested  to  Henry  Clinton  his 
Fasti  Hellenici.  Gray's  work  began  with  the  30th  Olym- 
piad, and  was  brought  down  to  the  113th,  covering,  there- 
fore, 332  years.  Each  page  of  it  was  divided  into  nine 
columns — one  for  the  Olympiad,  the  second  for  the  Ar- 
chons,  the  third  for  the  public  affairs  of  Greece,  the  fourth, 
fifth,  and  sixth  for  the  Philosophers,  the  seventh  for  the 
Poets,  the  eighth  for  the  Historians,  and  the  ninth  for  the 
Orators. 

The  same  letter  which  announces  this  performance  men- 
tions the  Odes  of  Collins  and  Joseph  WTarton.  Gray  had 
been  briskly  supplied  with  these  little  books,  which  had 
only  been  published  a  few  days  before.  The  former  was 
the  important  volume,  but  the  public  bought  the  latter. 
Gray's  comment  on  Warton  and  Collins  is  remarkable : 
"  Each  is  the  half  of  a  considerable  man,  and  one  the 
counterpart  of  the  other.  The  first  has  but  little  inven- 
tion, very  poetical  choice  of  expression,  and  a  good  ear. 
The  second,  a  fine  fancy,  modelled  upon  the  antique,  a 
bad  car,  great  variety  of  words  and  images,  with  no  choice 
at  all.    They  both  deserve  to  last  some  years,  but  will  not.'''' 


tt]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  83 

Tli is  last  clause  is  an  example  of  the  vanity  of  prophesy- 
ing. It  is  difficult  to  understand  what  Gray  meant  by 
accusing  Collins  of  a  "  bad  ear,"  the  one  thing  in  which 
Collins  was  undoubtedly  Gray's  superior;  in  other  respects 
the  criticism,  though  unsympathetic,  is  not  without  acu- 
men, and,  for  bad  or  good,  was  the  most  favourable  thing 
said  of  Collins  for  many  years  to  come.  In  1748  Gray 
and  Collins  were  destined  to  meet,  for  once  during  their 
lives,  between  the  covers  of  the  same  book,  at  which  we 
shall  presently  arrive. 

Gray  was  thirty  years  old  on  the  day  that  he  read  Col- 
lins's  Odes.  He  describes  himself  as  "  lazy  and  listless 
and  old  and  vexed  and  perplexed,"  with  all  human  evils 
but  the  gout,  which  was  soon  to  follow.  The  proceed- 
ings at  Pembroke  had  reached  such  a  pass  that  Gray  began 
to  sympathize  with  the  poor  old  Master,  him  of  the  water- 
velocipede.  The  Fellows  had  now  grown  so  rebellious  as 
to  abuse  him  roundly  to  his  face,  never  to  go  into  com- 
bination-room till  he  went  out,  or  if  he  entered  whilst  they 
were  there  to  continue  sitting  even  in  his  own  magisterial 
chair.  They  would  bicker  with  him  about  twenty  paltry 
matters  till  he  would  lose  his  temper,  and  tell  them  they 
were  impertinent.  Gray  turned  from  all  this  to  a  scheme 
which  he  had  long  had  in  view,  the  publication  of  his 
friend  West's  poems.  Walpole  proposed  that  he  should 
bring  out  these  and  his  own  odes  in  a  single  volume,  and 
Gray  was  not  disinclined  to  carry  out  this  notion.  But 
when  he  came  to  put  their  "joint-stock"  together  he 
found  it  insufficient  in  bulk.  Nor,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  did  the  few  and  scattered  verses  of  West  see  the 
light  till  long  after  the  death  of  Gray.  All  that  came 
of  this  talk  of  printing  was  the  anonymous  publication 
of  the  Eton  Ode.     Meanwhile,  as  he  says  to  Wharton,  in 


84  GRAY.  [chap. 

March,  1747,  "  my  works  are  not  so  considerable  as  you 
imagine.  I  have  read  Pausanias  and  Athenaius  all  through, 
and  vEschylus  again.  I  am  now  in  Pindar  and  Lysias,  for 
I  take  verse  and  prose  together  like  bread  and  cheese." 

About  this   time  the  excellent  Wharton   married  and 
left  Cambridge.     A  still  worse    misfortune  happened  to 
Gray  in  the  destruction  of  his  house  in  Cornhill,  which 
was  burnt  down  in  May,  1748.     He  seems  to  have  been 
waked  up  a  little  by  this  disaster,  and  to  have  spent  seven 
weeks  in  town  as  the  guest  of  various  friends,  who  were 
"  all  so  sorry  for  my  loss  that  I  could  not  choose  but 
laugh :  one  offered  me  opera  tickets,  insisted  upon  carry- 
ing me  to  the  grand  masquerade,  desired  me  to  sit  for  my 
picture  ;  others  asked  me  to  their  concerts,  or  dinners  and 
suppers  at  their  houses;  or  hoped  I  would  drink  choco- 
late with  them  while  I  stayed  in  town.     All  my  gratitude 
— or,  if  you  please,  my  revenge — was  to  accept  everything 
they  offered  me;  if  it  had  been  but  a  shilling  I  should 
have  taken  it :  thank  Heaven,  I  was  in  good  spirits,  else  I 
could  not  have  done  it."     London  was  amusing  for  him 
at  this  time,  with  Horace  Walpole  flying  between  Arling- 
ton Street  and  Strawberry  Hill,  and  Chute  and  his  nephew 
Whithead  full  of  sprightly  gaieties   and  always  glad  to 
see  him.     Whithead,  who  was  in  the  law,  undertook  with 
success  about  this  time  some  legal  business  for  Gray,  the 
exact  nature  of  which  does  not  appear,  and  the  poet  de- 
scribes him  as  "  a  fine  young  personage  in  a  coat  all  over 
spangles,  just  come  over  from  the  tour  of  Europe  to  take 
possession  and  be  married.     Say  I  wish  him  more  span- 
gles, and  more  estates,  and  more  wives."     Poor  Whithead 
did  not  live  long  enough  to  marry  one  wife;  whilst  his 
engagement  loitered  on  he  fell  ill  of  a  galloping  consump- 
tion, and  died  in  1751,  his  death  being  accelerated  by  the 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  85 

imprudence  of  his  brother,  a  clergyman,  who  insisted  on 
taking  him  out  hunting  when  he  ought  to  have  been  in 
bed.  Gray's  house  in  Cornhill  had  been  insured  for  500/., 
but  the  expenses  of  rebuilding  it  amounted  to  650/.  One 
of  bis  aunts,  probably  Miss  Antrobus,  made  him  a  present 
of  100/. ;  another  aunt,  still  more  probably  Mrs.  Oliffe, 
lent  him  an  equal  sum  for  his  immediate  wants  on  a  de- 
cent rate  of  interest,  and  for  the  remainder  he  was  in- 
debted to  the  kindness  of  Wharton.  It  appears  from  all 
this  that  Gray's  income  was  strictly  bounded,  at  that 
time,  to  his  actual  expenses,  and  that  he  had  no  margin 
whatever.  lie  declined,  in  fact,  in  June,  1748,  an  invi- 
tation from  Dr.  Wharton  to  come  and  stay  with  him  in 
the  North  of  England,  on  the  ground  that  "  the  good 
people  here  [at  Stoke]  would  think  me  the  most  care- 
less and  ruinous  of  mortals,  if  I  should  think  of  a  jour- 
ney at  this  time." 

In  the  letter  from  which  a  quotation  has  just  been 
given  Gray  mentions  for  the  first  time  a  man  whose 
name  was  to  be  inseparably  associated  with  his  own, 
without  whose  pious  care  for  his  memory,  indeed,  the 
task  of  writing  Gray's  life  in  any  detail  would  be  impos- 
sible. In  the  year  1747  Gray's  attention  was  directed  by 
a  friend  to  a  modest  publication  of  verses  in  imitation  of 
Milton ;  the  death  of  Pope  was  sung  in  an  elegy  called 
Musceus,  to  resemble  Lycidas,  and  Milton's  odes  found 
counterparts  in  77  Bellicoso  and  II  Pucifico.  These 
pieces,  which  were  not  entirely  without  a  meritorious 
ease  of  metre,  were  the  production  of  William  Mason,  a 
young  man  of  twenty-two,  the  son  of  a  Yorkshire  clergy- 
man, and  a  scholar  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.  His 
intelligence  first  attracted  the  notice  of  a  fellow  of  his 
own    college,  Dr.   William    Heberden,  the    distinguished 


86  GRAY.  [chap. 

Professor  of  Medicine,  who  was  a  friend  of  Gray,  and  who 
was  very  possibly  the  person  who  showed  Mason's  poems 
to  the  latter.  In  the  course  of  the  same  year  (1747), 
through  the  exertions  of  Heberden  and  Gray,  Mason  was 
nominated  a  Fellow  of  Pembroke,  and  proposed  to  him- 
self to  enter  that  remarkable  bear-garden.  But  Dr.  Roger 
Long  refused  his  consent,  and  it  was  not  until  February, 
1749,  and  after  much  litigation,  that  Mason  was  finally 
elected. 

There  was  something  about  Mason  which  Gray  liked, 
a  hearty  simplicity  and  honest  ardour  that  covered  a  good 
deal  of  push  which  Gray  thought  vulgar  and  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  chastise.  Mason,  on  his  side,  was  a  faithful  and 
affectionate  henchman,  full  of  undisguised  admiration  of 
Gray  and  fear  of  his  sarcasm,  not  unlike  Boswell  in  his 
persistence,  and  in  his  patience  in  enduring  the  reproofs 
of  the  great  man.  Gray  constantly  crushed  Mason,  but 
the  latter  was  never  offended,  and  after  a  few  tears  re- 
turned manfully  to  the  charge.  Gray's  description  of 
him  in  the  second  year  of  their  acquaintance,  when  Ma- 
son was  only  twenty-three,  was  this :  "  Mason  has  much 
fancy,  little  judgment,  and  a  good  deal  of  modesty.  I 
take  him  for  a  good  and  well-meaning  creature ;  but  then 
he  is  really  in  simplicity  a  child,  and  loves  everybody  he 
meets  with  ;  he  reads  little  or  nothing,  writes  abundance, 
and  that  with  a  desire  to  make  his  fortune  by  it."  This 
literary  fluency  was  a  matter  of  wonder  to  Gray,  whose 
own  attar  of  roses  was  distilled  slowly  and  painfully,  drop 
by  drop,  and  all  through  life  he  was  apt  to  overrate  Ma- 
son's verses.  It  was  very  difficult,  of  course,  for  him  to 
feel  unfavourably  towards  a  friend  so  enthusiastic  and 
so  anxious  to  please,  and  we  cannot  take  Gray's  earnest 
approval   of  Mason's   odes   and   tragedies   too    critically. 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  87 

Moreover,  lie  was  Gray's  earliest  and  most  slavish  disci- 
ple ;  before  he  left  St.  John's  to  come  within  the  greater 
poet's  more  habitual  influence,  he  had  begun  to  imitate 
poems  which  he  can  only  have  seen  in  manuscript. 

Henceforward,  in  spite  of  his  somewhat  coarse  and 
superficial  nature,  in  spite  of  his  want  of  depth  in  im- 
agination and  soundness  in  scholarship,  in  spite  of  a  gen- 
eral want  of  the  highest  qualities  of  character,  Mason  be- 
came a  great  support  and  comfort  to  Gray.  His  physi- 
cal vigour  and  versatility,  his  eagerness  in  the  pursuit  of 
literature,  his  unselfish  ardour  and  loyalty,  were  refresh- 
ing to  the  more  fastidious  and  retiring  man,  who  enjoyed, 
moreover,  the  chance  of  having  at  last  found  a  person 
with  whom  he  could  discourse  freely  about  literature,  in 
that  constant  easy  interchange  of  impressions  which  is  the 
luxury  of  a  purely  literary  life.  Moreover,  we  must  do 
Mason  the  justice  to  say  that  he  supplied  to  Gray's  fancy 
whatever  stimulus  such  a  mind  as  his  was  calculated  to 
offer,  receiving  his  smallest  and  most  fragmentary  effusions 
with  interest,  encouraging  him  to  the  completion  of  his 
poems,  and  receiving  each  fresh  ode  as  if  a  new  planet 
had  risen  above  the  horizon.  With  Walpole  to  be  playful 
with,  and  Mason  to  be  serious  with,  Gray  was  no  longer 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  exposed  to  that  east  wind  of  solitary 
wretchedness  which  had  parched  him  for  the  first  three 
years  of  his  life  at  Cambridge.  At  the  same  time,  grate- 
ful as  we  must  be  to  Mason  for  his  affection  and  good- 
heartedness,  we  cannot  refrain  from  wishing  that  his 
poems  had  been  fastened  to  a  mill-stone  and  cast  into  the 
river  Cam.  They  are  not  only  barren  and  pompous  to  the 
very  last  degree,  but  to  the  lovers  of  Gray  they  have  this 
disadvantage,  that  they  constantly  resolve  that  poet's  true 
sublime  into  the  ridiculous,  and  leave  on  the  ear  an  uncom- 
G     5  30 


88  GRAY.  [chap. 

fortable  echo,  as  of  a  too  successful  burlesque  or  parody. 
Of  this  Gray  himself  was  not  unconscious,  though  he  put 
the  thought  behind  him,  as  one  inconsistent  with  friendship. 
A  disreputable  personage  who  crossed  Gray's  orbit  about 
this  time,  and  was  the  object  of  his  cordial  dislike  and 
contempt,  has  left  on  the  mind  of  posterity  a  sense  of 
higher  natural  gifts  than  any  possessed  by  the  respectable 
Mason.  Christopher  Smart,  long  afterwards  author  of  the 
Song  to  David,  was  an  idle  young  man  who  had  been  ad- 
mitted to  Pembroke  in  October,  1739,  under  the  protec- 
tion of  the  Earl  of  Darlington,  and  who  in  1745  was 
elected  a  Fellow  of  his  college.  As  early  as  1740  he  be- 
gan to  be  celebrated  for  the  wit  and  originality  of  his 
Latin  tripos  verse,  of  which  a  series  are  still  in  existence. 
One  of  these,  a  droll  celebration  of  the  Nativity  of  Yawn- 
ing, is  not  unlike  Gray's  own  Hymn  to  Ignorance  in  its 
contempt  for  the  genius  of  Cambridge.  But  Smart  lost 
credit  by  his  pranks  and  levities  no  less  quickly  than  he 
gained  it  by  his  skill.  Gray  writes  in  March,  1747,  that 
Smart's  debts  are  increasing  daily,  and  that  he  drinks 
hartshorn  from  morning  till  night.  A  month  later  he  had 
scandalized  the  University  by  performing  in  the  Zodiac 
Room,  a  club  which  had  been  founded  in  1725,  a  play  of 
his  own  called  A  Trip  to  Cambridge ;  or,  the  Grateful 
Fair,  a  piece  which  was  never  printed  and  now  no  longer 
is  in  existence.  Already,  at  this  time,  Gray  thought 
Smart  mad.  "  He  can't  hear  his  own  Prologue  without 
being  ready  to  die  with  laughter.  He  acts  five  parts  him- 
self, and  is  only  sorry  he  can't  do  all  the  rest.  ...  As  for 
his  vanity  and  faculty  of  lying,  they  have  come  to  their 
full  maturity.  All  this,  you  see,  must  come  to  a  jail,  or 
Bedlam."  It  did  come  to  Bedlam,  in  1763,  but  not  until 
Smart  had  exhausted  every  eccentricity  and  painful  folly 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  89 

possible  to  man.  But  the  minor  catastrophe  was  much 
nearer,  namely,  the  jail.  In  November,  1747,  he  was  ar- 
rested at  the  suit  of  a  London  tailor,  was  got  out  of  prison 
by  means  of  a  subscription  made  in  the  college,  and  re- 
ceived a  sound  warning  to  behave  better  in  future,  a  warn- 
ing which  Gray,  who  watched  him  narrowly  and  noted  his 
moral  symptoms  with  cold  severity,  justly  predicted  would 
be  entirely  frustrated  by  his  drunkenness. 

The  frequent  disturbances  caused  in  the  University  by 
such  people  as  Smart  had  by  this  time  led  to  much  public 
scandal.  Gray  says :  "  The  Fellow-commoners — the  bucks 
— are  run  mad ;  they  set  women  upon  their  heads  in  the 
streets  at  noonday,  break  open  shops,  game  in  the  coffee- 
houses on  Sundays,  and  in  short,"  he  adds,  in  angry  irony, 
"  act  after  my  own  heart."  The  Tuns  Tavern  at  Cam- 
bridge was  the  scene  of  nightly  orgies,  in  which  Professors 
and  Fellows  set  an  example  of  roistering  to  the  youth  of 
the  University.  Heavy  bills  were  run  up  at  inns  and  cof- 
fee-houses, which  were  afterwards  repudiated  with  effron- 
tery. The  breaking  of  windows  and  riots  in  public  parts 
of  the  town  were  indulged  in  to  such  an  extent  as  to  make 
Cambridge  almost  intolerable,  and  the  work  of  James 
Brown,  Gray's  intimate  friend,  who  held  the  post  of  Sen- 
ior Proctor,  was  far  from  being  a  sinecure.  In  1748  the 
Duke  of  Somerset,  who  had  absolutely  neglected  his  re- 
sponsibilities, was  succeeded  in  the  Chancellorship  by  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  whose  installation  promised  little  hope 
of  reform.  Gray  described  the  scene  to  Wharton :  "  Every 
one  whilst  it  lasted  was  very  gay  and  very  busy  in  the 
morning,  and  very  owlish  and  very  tipsy  at  night :  I  make 
no  exception,  from  the  Chancellor  to  blue-coat,"  who  was 
the  Vice-chancellor's  servant.  However,  it  presently  ap- 
peared that  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  was  not  inclined  to 


90  GRAY.  [chap. 

sacrifice  discipline.  The  Bishops  united  with  him  in  con- 
cocting a  plan  by  which  the  license  of  the  resident  mem- 
bers of  the  University  should  be  checked,  and  in  May, 
1750,  the  famous  code  of  Orders  and  Regulations  was 
brought  before  the  Senate.  It  was  not,  however,  easy  to 
restore  order  to  a  community  which  had  so  long  been  de- 
voted to  the  Lord  of  Misrule,  and  it  was  not  until  more 
than  twenty  persons  of  good  family  had  been  "  expelled  or 
rusticated  for  very  heinous  violations  of  our  laws  and  dis- 
cipline "  that  anything  like  decent  behaviour  was  restored, 
the  fury  of  the  undergraduates  displaying  itself  in  a  final 
outburst  of  mutiny,  in  which  they  rushed  along  the  streets 
brandishing  lighted  links. 

This  scene  of  rebellion  and  confusion  could  not  fail  to 
excite  strong  emotion  in  the  mind  of  a  man  like  Gray,  of 
orderly  tastes  and  timid  personal  character,  to  whom  a 
painted  Indian  would  be  scarcely  a  more  formidable  object 
than  a  noisy  young  buck,  flushed  with  wine,  flinging  his 
ash-stick  against  college  windows,  and  his  torch  into  the 
faces  of  passers-by.  A  life  at  the  University  given  up  to 
dice  and  horses,  and  the  loud,  coarse  Georgian  dissipation 
of  that  day,  could  not  seem  to  a  thinker  to  be  one  which 
brought  glory  cither  to  the  teacher  or  the  taught,  and  in 
the  midst  of  this  sensual  riot  Gray  sat  down  to  write  his 
poem  on  The  Alliance  of  Education  and  Government.  Of 
his  philosophical  fragments  this  is  by  far  the  best,  and  it 
is  seriously  to  be  regretted  that  it  does  not  extend  beyond 
one  hundred  and  ten  lines.  The  design  of  the  poem, 
which  has  been  preserved,  is  highly  interesting,  and  the 
treatment  at  least  as  poetical  as  that  of  so  purely  didactic 
a  theme  could  be.  Short  as  it  is,  it  attracted  the  warm 
enthusiasm  of  Gibbon,  who  ejaculates :  "  Instead  of  com- 
piling tables  of  chronology  and  natural  history,  why  did 


iv.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  91 

not  Mr.  Gray  apply  the  powers  of  his  genius  to  finish  the 
philosophical  poem  of  which  he  has  left  such  an  exquisite 
specimen  f '  The  heroic  couplet  is  used  with  great  skill ; 
as  an  example  may  be  cited  the  lines  descrihing  the  inva- 
sion of  Italy  by  the  Goths — 

"  As  oft  have  issued,  host  impelling  host, 
The  blue-eyed  myriads  from  the  Baltic  coast ; 
The  prostrate  South  to  the  destroyer  yields 
Her  boasted  titles  and  her  golden  fields : 
With  grim  delight  the  brood  of  winter  view 
A  brighter  day,  and  heavens  of  azure  hue, 
Scent  the  uew  fragrance  of  the  breathing  rose, 
And  quaff  the  pendant  vintage  as  it  grows  " — 

whilst  one  line,  at  least,  lives  in  the  memory  of  every  lover 
of  poetry : 

"  When  love  could  teach  a  monarch  to  be  wise, 
And  Gospel-liyht  first  dawrCdfrom  Bulleii's  eyes." 

On  the  19th  of  August,  1748,  Gray  copied  the  first  fifty- 
seven  lines  of  this  poem  in  a  letter  he  was  writing  to 
Wharton,  saying  that  his  object  would  be  to  show  that 
education  and  government  must  concur  in  order  to  pro- 
duce great  and  useful  men.  But  as  he  was  pursuing  his 
plan  in  the  leisurely  manner  habitual  to  him,  Montes- 
quieu's celebrated  work,  U Esprit  des  Lois,  was  published, 
and  fell  into  his  hands.  He  found,  as  he  told  Mason, 
that  the  Baron  had  forestalled  some  of  his  best  thoughts, 
and  from  this  time  forth  his  interest  in  the  scheme  lan- 
guished, and  soon  after  it  entirely  lapsed.  Some  years 
later  he  thought  of  taking  it  up  again,  and  was  about  to 
compose  a  prefatory  Ode  to  M.  de  Montesquieu  when  that 
writer  died,  on  the  10th  of  February,  1755,  and  the  whole 
thing  was   abandoned.     Gray's  remarks   on  IS  Esprit  des 


92  GRAY.  [chap. iv- 

Lois  are  in  his  clearest  and  acutest  vein :  "  The  subject 
is  as  extensive  as  mankind  ;  the  thoughts  perfectly  new, 
generally  admirable,  as  they  are  just ;  sometimes  a  little 
too  refined ;  in  short,  there  are  faults,  but  such  as  an  or- 
dinary man  could  never  have  committed :  the  style  very 
lively  and  concise,  consequently  sometimes  obscure — it  is 
the  gravity  of  Tacitus,  whom  he  admires,  tempered  with 
the  gaiety  and  fire  of  a  Frenchman."  Gray  was  proba- 
bly the  only  Englishman  living  capable  of  criticising  a 
new  French  book  with  this  delicate  justice. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  "ELEGY." SIX  POEMS. DEATHS  OP  GRAy's  AUNT 

AND  MOTHER. 

Early  in  1748  Dodsley  published  the  first  three  volumes 
of  his  useful  miscellany,  called  A  Collection  of  Poems,  for 
the  plan  of  which  he  claimed  an  originality  that  it  scarcely 
deserved,  since,  like  the  earlier  miscellanies  of  Gildon  and 
Tonson,  it  merely  aimed  at  embracing  in  one  work  the 
best  scattered  poetry  of  the  day.  In  the  second  volume 
were  printed,  without  the  author's  name,  three  of  Gray's 
odes — thosevTjo  Spring,  On  Mr.  Walpole's  Cat,  and  the 
Eton  Ode.  Almost  all  the  poets  of  this  age,  and  several 
of  the  preceding,  were  contributors  to  the  collection. 
Pope,  Green,  and  Tickell  represented  the  past  generation ; 
whilst  Collins,  Dyer,  and  Shcnstone,  in  the  first  volume; 
Lyttelton,  Gilbert  West,  J.  H.  Browne,  and  Edwards,  the 
sonneteer,  in  the  second  volume ;  and  Joseph  Warton, 
Garrick,  Mason,  and  Walpole  himself,  in  the  third  volume, 
showed  to  the  best  of  their  ability  what  English  poetry  in 
that  age  was  capable  of;  whilst  three  sturdy  Graces,  bare 
and  bold,  adorned  the  title-page  of  each  instalment,  and 
gave  a  kind  of  visible  pledge  that  no  excess  of  refinement 
should  mar  the  singing,  even  when  Lowth,  Bishop  of 
London,  held  the  lyre. 

As  in  the  crisis  of  a  national  history  some  young  man, 


94  GRAY.  [chap 

unknown  before,  leaps  to  the  front  by  sheer  force  of  char- 
acter, and  takes  the  helm  of  state  before  his  elders,  so  in 
the  confusion  and  mutiny  at  the  University  the  talents  of 
Dr.  Edmund  Keene,  the  new  Master  of  Peterhouse,  came 
suddenly  into  notice,  and  from  comparative  obscurity  he 
rose  at  once  into  the  fierce  light  that  beats  upon  a  success- 
ful reformer.  His  energy  and  promptitude  pointed  him 
out  as  a  fit  man  to  become  Vice-chancellor  in  the  troub- 
lous year  1749,  although  he  was  only  thirty-six  years  of 
age,  and  it  was  practically  owing  to  his  quick  eye  and 
hard  hand  that  order  was  re-instated  in  the  University. 
With  his  Mastership  of  the  college  Gray  began  to  take  an 
interest  for  the  first  time  in  Peterhouse,  and  cultivated  the 
acquaintance  of  Keene,  in  whom  he  discovered  an  energy 
and  practical  power  which  he  had  never  suspected.  The 
reign  of  Mum  Sharp,  as  the  undergraduates  nicknamed 
Keene,  was  as  brief  as  it  was  brilliant.  In  1752  the  Gov- 
ernment rewarded  his  action  in  the  University  with  the  see 
of  Chester,  and  two  years  later  he  resigned  his  nominal 
headship  of  Peterhouse,  dying  Bishop  of  Ely  nearly  thirty 
years  afterwards. 

At  Pembroke  Hall,  meanwhile,  all  was  going  well  at 
last.  In  the  spring  of  1749  there  was  a  pacification  be- 
tween the  Master  and  the  Fellows,  and  Pembroke,  says 
Gray  to  Wharton,  "  is  all  harmonious  and  delightful." 
But  the  rumours  of  dissension  had  thinned  the  ranks  of 
the  undergraduates;  "  they  have  no  boys  at  all,  and  unless 
you  can  send  us  a  hamper  or  two  out  of  the  North  to  be- 
gin with,  they  will  be  like  a  few  rats  straggling  about  a 
deserted  dwelling-house." 

Gray  was  now  about  to  enter  the  second  main  period  of 
his  literary  activity,  and  he  opens  it  with  a  hopeless  pro- 
testation of  his  apathy  and  idleness.     He  writes  (April 


t.]  THE  "ELEGY."  95 

25,  174!)),  from  Cambridge,  this  amusing  picco  of  proph. 
ccy :  "JThc  spirit  of  laziness,  the  spirit  of  this  place,  begins 
to  possess  even  me,  that  have  so  long  declaimed  against  it. 
Yet  has  it  not  so  prevailed  but  that  I  feel  that  discontent 
with  myself,  that  ennui  that  ever  accompanies  it  in  its  be- 
ginnings. Time  will  settle  my  conscience,  time  will  recon- 
cile my  languid  companion  ;  we  shall  smoke,  we  shall  tip- 
ple, we  shall  doze  together,  we  shall  have  our  little  jokes, 
like  other  people,  and  our  long  stories.  Brandy  will  finish 
what  port  began  ;  and  a  month  after  the  time  you  will  see 
in  some  corner  of  a  London  Evening  Post, l  Yesterday  died 
the  Rev.  Mr.  John  Gray,  Senior  Fellow  of  Clare  Hall,  a 
facetious  companion,  and  well  respected  by  all  that  knew 
him.  His  death  is  supposed  to  have  been  occasioned  by  a 
fit  of  the  apoplexy,  being  found  fallen  out  of  bed.'  "  But 
this  whimsical  anticipation  of  death  and  a  blundering  mort- 
uary inscription  was  startled  out  of  his  thoughts  by  the 
sudden  approach  of  death  itself  to  one  whom  he  dearly 
loved.  His  aunt,  Miss  Mary  Antrobus,  died  somewhat 
suddenly,  at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  at  Stoke,  on  the  5th  of 
November,  1749.  The  letter  which  Gray  wrote  to  his 
mother  on  receiving  news  of  this  event  is  so  characteristic 
of  his  wise  and  tender  seriousness  of  character,  and  allows 
us  to  observe  so  much  more  closely  than  usual  the  real 
working  of  his  mind,  that  no  apology  is  needed  for  quot- 
ing it  here.  It  was  written  from  Cambridge,  on  the  7th 
of  November,  1749: 

"The  unhappy  news  I  have  just  received  from  you  equally  sur- 
prises and  afflicts  me.  I  have  lost  a  person  I  loved  very  much,  and 
have  been  used  to  from  my  infancy ;  but  am  much  more  concerned 
for  your  loss,  the  circumstances  of  which  I  forbear  to  dwell  upon,  as 
you  must  be  too  sensible  of  them  yourself;  and  will,  I  fear,  more  and 
more  need  a  consolation  that  no  one  can  give,  except  He  who  had 

5* 


96  GRAY.  [chap. 

preserved  her  to  you  so  many  years,  and  at  last,  when  it  was  His 
pleasure,  has  taken  her  from  us  to  Himself ;  and,  perhaps,  if  we  re- 
flect upon  what  she  felt  in  this  life,  we  may  look  upon  this  as  an  in- 
stance of  His  goodness  both  to  her  and  to  those  that  loved  her.  She 
might  have  languished  many  years  before  our  eyes  in  a  continual  in- 
crease of  pain,  and  totally  helpless ;  she  might  have  long  wished  to 
end  her  misery  without  being  able  to  attain  it ;  or  perhaps  even  lost 
all  sense  and  yet  continued  to  breathe ;  a  sad  spectacle  for  such  as 
must  have  felt  more  for  her  than  she  could  have  done  for  herself. 
However  you  may  deplore  your  own  loss,  yet  think  that  she  is  at  last 
easy  and  happy,  and  has  now  more  occasion  to  pity  us  than  we  her. 
I  hope,  and  beg,  you  will  support  yourself  with  that  resignation  we 
owe  to  Him  who  gave  us  our  being  for  good,  and  who  deprives  us  of 
it  for  the  same  reason.  I  would  have  come  to  you  directly,  but  you 
do  not  say  whether  you  desire  I  should  or  not;  if  you  do,  I  beg  I 
may  know  it,  for  there  is  nothing  to  hinder  me,  and  I  am  in  very 
good  health." 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  anything  more  sweet-nat- 
ured  and  unaffected  than  this  letter,  and  it  opens  to  us 
for  a  moment  the  closed  and  sacred  book  of  Gray's  home- 
life,  those  quiet  autumn  days  of  every  year  so  peacefully 
spent  in  loving  and  being  loved  by  these  three  placid  old 
ladies  at  Stoke,  in  a  warm  atmosphere  of  musk  and  pot- 
pourri. 

The  death  of  his  aunt  seems  to  have  brought  to  his 
recollection  the  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church-yard,  begun 
seven  years  before  within  sight  of  the  ivy-clustered  spire 
under  whose  shadow  she  was  laid.  He  seems  to  have 
taken  it  in  hand  again,  at  Cambridge,  in  the  winter  of 
1749,  and  tradition,  which  would  fain  see  the  poet  always 
writing  in  the  very  precincts  of  a  church-yard,  has  fabled 
that  he  wrote  some  stanzas  amongst  the  tombs  of  Gran- 
chester.  He  finished  it,  however,  as  he  began  it,  at 
Stoke-Pogis,  giving  the  last  touches  to  it  on  the  12th  of 
June,  1750.     "Having  put  an  end  to  a  thing  whose  be- 


v.]  THE  "ELEGY."  97 

ginning  you  have  seen  long  ago,"  he  writes  on  that  day 
to  Horace  Walpole,  "  I  immediately  send  it  to  you.  You 
will,  I  hope,  look  upon  it  in  the  light  of  a  thing  with  an 
end  to  it :  a  merit  that  most  of  my  writings  have  wanted, 
and  are  like  to  want."  Walpole  was  only  too  highly 
delighted  with  this  latest  effusion  of  his  friend,  in  which 
he  was  acute  enough  to  discern  the  elements  of  a  lasting 
success.  It  is  curious  to  reflect  upon  the  modest  and 
careless  mode  in  which  that  poem  was  first  circulated 
which  was  destined  to  enjoy  and  to  retain  a  higher  repu- 
tation in  literature  than  any  other  English  poem,  perhaps 
than  any  other  poem  of  the  world,  written  between  Mil- 
ton and  Wordsworth.  The  fame  of  the  Elegy  has  spread 
to  all  countries,  and  has  exercised  an  influence  on  all  the 
poetry  of  Europe,  from  Denmark  to  Italy,  from  France 
to  Russia.  With  the  exception  of  certain  works  of  By- 
ron and  Shakspeare,  no  English  poem  has  been  so  widely 
admired  and  imitated  abroad ;  and,  after  more  than  a 
century  of  existence,  we  find  it  as  fresh  as  ever,  when  its 
copies,  even  the  most  popular  of  all,  Lamartine's  Le  Lucy 
are  faded  and  tarnished.  It  possesses  the  charm  of  in- 
comparable felicity,  of  a  melody  that  is  not  too  subtle  to 
charm  every  ear,  of  a  moral  persuasiveness  that  appeals  j 
to  every  generation,  and  of  metrical  skill  that  in  each ' 
line  proclaims  the  master.  The  Elegy  may  almost  b^ 
looked  upon  as  the  typical  piece  of  English  verse,  our 
poem  of  poems ;  not  that  it  is  the  most  brilliant  or  orig- 
inal or  profound  lyric  in  our  language,  but  because  it 
combines  in  more  balanced  perfection  than  any  other  all 
the  qualities  that  go  to  the  production  of  a  fine  poetical 
effect.  The  successive  criticisms  of  a  swarm  of  Dryas- 
dusts, each  depositing  his  drop  of  siccative,  the  boundless 
vogue  ami  consequent  profanation  of  stanza  upon  stanza, 


98  GRAY.  [chap. 

the  changes  of  fashion,  the  familiarity  that  breeds  indif- 
ference, all  these  things  have  not  succeeded  in  destroying 
the  vitality  of  this  humane  and  stately  poem.  The  sol- 
itary writer  of  authority  who  since  the  death  of  Johnson 
has  ventured  to  depreciate  Gray's  poetry,  Mr.  Swinburne, 
who,  in  his  ardour  to  do  justice  to  Collins,  has  been  deeply 
and  extravagantly  unjust  to  the  greater  man,  even  he, 
coming  to  curse,  has  been  obliged  to  bless  this  "  poem  of 
such  high  perfection  and  such  universal  appeal  to  the 
tenderest  and  noblest  depths  of  human  feeling,"  admit- 
ting, again,  with  that  frankness  which  makes  Mr.  Swin- 
burne the  most  generous  of  disputants,  that  "  as  an  elegiac 
poet  Gray  holds  for  all  ages  to  come  his  unassailable  and 
sovereign  station." 

We  may  well  leave  to  its  fate  a  poem  with  so  splendid 
a  history,  a  poem  more  thickly  studded  with  phrases  that 
have  become  a  part  and  parcel  of  colloquial  speech  than 
any  other  piece,  even  of  Shakspeare's,  consisting  of  so  few 
consecutive  lines.  A  word  or  two,  however,  may  not  be 
out  of  place  in  regard  to  its  form  and  the  literary  his- 
tory of  its  composition.  The  heroic  quatrain,  in  the  use 
of  which,  here  and  elsewhere,  Gray  easily  excels  all  other 
English  writers,  was  not  new  to  our  literature.  Amongst 
the  Pembroke  MSS.  I  find  copious  notes  by  Gray  on  the 
JYosce  Teipsum  of  Sir  John  Davies,  a  beautiful  philosoph- 
ical poem  first  printed  in  1599,  and  composed  in  this 
measure.  Davenant  had  chosen  the  same  for  his  fra£rnen- 
tary  epic  of  G'ondibert,  and  Dryden  for  his  metallic  and 
gorgeous  poem  of  the  Annus  Mirabilis.  All  these  essays 
were  certainly  known  to  Gray,  and  he  was  possibly  not 
uninfluenced  by  the  Love  Elegies  of  James  Hammond,  a 
young  cousin  of  Horace  Walpole's,  who  had  died  in  1742, 
and  had  affected  to  be  the  Tibullus  of  the  age.     Hammond 


v.]  THE  "ELEGY."  93 

bad  more  taste  than  genius,  yet  after  reading,  with  much 
fatigue,  his  forgotten  elegies,  I  cannot  avoid  the  impression 
that  Gray  was  influenced  by  this  poetaster,  in  the  matter 
of  form,  more  than  by  any  other  of  his  contemporaries. 
A  familiar  quotation  of  West — 

"  Ah  me !  what  boots  us  all  our  boasted  power, 
Our  golden  treasure  and  our  purple  state  ? 
They  cannot  ward  the  inevitable  hour, 
Nor  stay  the  fearful  violence  of  fate  " — 

was  probably  the  wild-wood  stock  on  which  Gray  grafted 
his  wonderful  rose  of  roses,  borrowing  something  from  all 
his  predecessors,  but  justifying  every  act  of  plagiarism  by 
the  brilliance  of  his  new  combination.  Even  the  tiresome 
singsong  of  Hammond  became  in  Gray's  hands  an  instru- 
ment of  infinite  variety  and  beauty,  as  if  a  craftsman  by 
the  mere  touch  of  his  fingers  should  turn  ochre  into  gold. 
The  measure  itself,  from  first  to  last,  is  an  attempt  to 
render  in  English  the  solemn  alternation  of  passion  and 
reserve,  the  interchange  of  imploring  and  desponding 
tones,  that  is  found  in  the  Latin  elegiac,  and  Gray  gave  his 
poem,  when  he  first  published  it,  an  outward  resemblance 
to  the  text  of  Tibullus  by  printing  it  without  any  stanzaic 
pauses.  It  is  in  this  form  and  with  the  original  spelling 
that  the  poem  appears  in  an  exquisite  little  volume,  pri- 
vately printed  a  few  years  ago  at  the  Cambridge  Univer- 
sity Press,  in  which  Mr.  Munro  has  placed  his  own  0 vidi- 
an translation  of  the  Elegy  opposite  the  original  text :  as 
pretty  a  tribute  as  was  ever  paid  by  one  great  University 
scholar  to  the  memory  of  another. 

Walpole's  enthusiasm  for  the  Elegy  in  a  Country 
Church-yard  led  him  to  commit  the  grave  indiscretion 
of  handing  it  about  from  friend  to  friend,  and  even  of 


100  GRAY.  [chap. 

distributing  manuscript  copies  of  it,  without  Gray's  cogni- 
zance. At  the  Manor  House  at  Stoke,  Lady  Cobharn,  who 
seems  to  have  known  Horace  Walpole,  read  the  Elegy  in 
a  Country  Church-yard  in  manuscript  before  it  had  been 
many  months  in  existence,  and  conceived  a  violent  desire 
to  know  the  author.  So  quiet  was  Gray,  and  so  little  in- 
clined to  assert  his  own  personality,  that  she  was  unaware 
that  he  and  she  had  lived  together  in  the  same  country 
parish  for  several  years,  until  a  Rev.  Mr.  Robert  Purt,  a 
Cambridge  Fellow  settled  at  Stoke,  told  her  that  "  there- 
abouts there  lurked  a  wicked  imp  they  call  a  poet."  Mr. 
Purt,  however,  enjoyed  a  very  slight  acquaintance  with 
Gray  (he  was  offended  shortly  afterwards  at  the  introduc- 
tion of  his  name  into  the  Long  Story,  and  very  properly 
died  of  small-pox  immediately),  and  could  not  venture  to 
introduce  him  to  her  ladyship.  Lady  Cobham,  however, 
had  a  guest  staying  with  her,  a  Lady  Schaub,  who  knew 
a  friend  of  Gray's,  a  Lady  Brown.  On  this  very  meagre 
introduction  Lady  Schaub  and  Miss  Speed,  the  niece  of 
Lady  Cobham,  were  persuaded  by  her  ladyship,  who  shot 
her  arrow  like  Teucer  from  behind  the  shield  of  Ajax,  to 
call  boldly  upon  Gray.  They  did  so  in  the  summer  of 
1751,  but  when  they  had  crossed  the  fields  to  West-End 
House  they  found  that  the  poet  had  gone  out  for  a  walk. 
They  begged  the  ladies  to  say  nothing  of  their  visit,  but 
they  left  amongst  the  papers  in  Gray's  study  this  piquant 
little  note  :  "  Lady  Schaub's  compliments  to  Mr.  Gray ;  she 
is  sorry  not  to  have  found  him  at  home,  to  tell  him  that 
Lady  Brown  is  very  well."  This  little  adventure  assumed 
the  hues  of  mystery  and  romance  in  so  uneventful  a  life 
as  Gray's,  and  curiosity  combined  with  good-manners  to 
make  him  put  his  shyness  in  his  pocket  and  return  Lady 
Schaub's  polite  but  eccentric  call.     That  far-reaching  spi- 


v.]  THE  "ELEGY."  101 

der,  the  Viscountess  Cobham,  Lad  now  fairly  caught  him 
in  her  web,  and  for  the  remaining  nine  years  of  her  life 
she  and  her  niece,  Miss  Speed,  were  his  fast  friends.  In- 
deed, his  whole  life  might  have  been  altered  if  Lady  Cob- 
ham  had  had  her  way,  for  it  seems  certain  that  she  would 
have  been  highly  pleased  to  have  seen  him  the  husband 
of  Harriet  Speed  and  inheritor  of  the  fortunes  of  the 
family.  At  one  time  Gray  seems  to  have  been  really 
frightened  lest  they  should  marry  him  suddenly,  against 
his  will ;  and  perhaps  he  almost  wished  they  would.  At 
all  events  the  only  lines  of  his  which  can  be  called  ama- 
tory were  addressed  to  Miss  Speed.  She  was  seven  years 
Lis  junior,  and  when  she  was  nearly  forty  she  married  a 
very  young  French  officer,  and  went  to  live  abroad,  to 
which  events,  not  uninteresting  to  Gray,  we  shall  return 
in  their  proper  place. 

The  romantic  incidents  of  the  call  just  described  in- 
spired Gray  with  his  fantastic  account  of  them  given  in 
the  Long  Story.  He  dwells  on  the  ancient  seat  of  the 
Huntingdons  and  Hattons,  from  the  door  of  which  one 
morning  issued 

"A  brace  of  warriors,  not  in  buff, 

But  rustling  in  their  silks  and  tissues. 

"The  first  came  cap-a-pee  from  Fiance, 
Her  conquering  destiny  fulfilling, 
Whom  meaner  beauties  eye  askance, 
And  vainly  ape  her  art  of  killing. 

"The  other  Amazon  kind  Heaven 

Had  armed  with  spirit,  wit,  and  satire; 
But  Cobham  had  the  polish  given, 

And  tipped  her  arrows  with  good-nature. 


102  GRAY.  tcHAP. 

"  With  bonnet  blue  and  capuchine, 

And  aprons  long,  they  hid  their  armour ; 
And  veiled  their  weapons,  bright  and  keen, 
In  pity  to  the  country  farmer." 

These  warriors  sallied  forth  in  the  cause  of  a  lady  of 
high  degree,  who  had  just  heard  that  the  parish  contained 
a  poet,  and  who 

"  Swore  by  her  coronet  and  ermine 
She'd  issue  out  her  high  commission 
To  rid  the  manor  of  such  vermin." 

At  last  they  discover  his  lowly  haunt,  and  bounce  in 
without  so  much  as  a  tap  at  the  door : 

"  The  trembling  family  they  daunt, 

They  flirt,  they  sing,  they  laugh,  they  tattle; 
Rummage  his  mother,  pinch  his  aunt, 
And  up-stairs  in  a  whirlwind  rattle : 

"  Each  hole  and  cupboard  they  explore, 
Each  creek  and  cranny  of  his  chamber, 
Run  hurry-scurry  round  the  floor, 
And  o'er  the  bed  and  tester  clamber : 

"  Into  the  drawers  and  china  pry, 

Papers  and  books,  a  huge  imbroglio ; 
Under  a  teacup  he  might  lie, 

Or  creased,  like  dog's-ears,  in  a  folio." 

The  pitying  Muses,  however,  have  conveyed  him  away, 
and  the  proud  Amazons  are  obliged  to  retreat;  but  they 
have  the  malignity  to  leave  a  spell  behind  them,  which 
their  victim  finds  when  he  slinks  back  to  his  home : 

"  The  words  too  eager  to  unriddle 
The  poet  felt  a  strange  disorder ; 
Transparent  bird-lime  formed  the  middle, 
And  chains  invisible  the  border. 


v.j  THE  "ELEGY."  103 

"So  cunning  was  the  apparatus, 

The  powerful  pot-hooks  did  so  move  him, 
That,  will  he  nill  he,  to  the  great  house 
He  went  as  if  the  devil  drove  him." 

When  he  arrives  at  the  Manor  House,  of  course,  he  is 
dragged  before  the  great  lady,  and  is  only  saved  from 
destruction  by  her  sudden  fit  of  clemency : 

"The  ghostly  prudes  with  haggard  face 
Already  had  condemned  the  sinner. 
My  lady  rose,  and  with  a  grace — 

She  smiled,  and  bid  him  come  to  dinner." 

All  this  is  excellent  fooling,  charmingly  arch  and  easy  in 
its  humorous  romance,  and  highly  interesting  as  a  pict- 
ure of  Gray's  home-life.  In  the  Pembroke  MS.  of  the 
Long  Story  he  says  that  he  wrote  it  in  August,  1750. 
It  was  included  in  the  semi-private  issue  of  the  Six 
Poems  in  1753,  but  in  no  other  collection  published 
during  Gray's  lifetime.  He  considered  its  allusions  too 
personal  to  be  given  to  the  public. 

In  this  one  instance  Walpole's  indiscretion  hi  circu- 
lating the  Elegy  brought  Gray  satisfaction  ;  in  others  it 
annoyed  him.  On  the  10th  of  February,  1751,  he  re- 
ceived a  rather  impertinently  civil  letter  from  the  pub- 
lisher of  a  periodical  called  the  Magazine  of  Magazines, 
coolly  informing  him  that  he  was  actually  printing  his 
"  ingenious  poem  called  Reflections  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard," and  praying  for  his  indulgence  and  the  honour  of 
his  correspondence.  Gray  immediately  wrote  to  Horace 
Walpole  (February  11) :  "As  I  am  not  at  all  disposed  to 
be  either  so  indulgent  or  so  correspondent  as  they  de- 
sire, I  have  but  one  bad  way  left  to  escape  the  honour 

they  would  inflict  upon  me :  and  therefore  am  obliged  to 
H  31 


104  GRAY.  [chap. 

desire  you  would  make  Dodsley  print  it  immediately 
(which  may  be  done  in  less  than  a  week's  time)  from 
your  copy,  but  without  my  name,  in  what  form  is  most 
convenient  for  him,  but  on  his  best  paper  and  character; 
he  must  correct  the  press  himself,  and  print  it  without 
any  interval  between  the  stanzas,  because  the  sense  is  in 
some  places  continued  without  them."  All  this  was  done 
with  extraordinary  promptitude,  and  five  days  after  this 
letter  of  Gray's,  on  the  16th  of  February,  1751,  Dodsley 
published  a  large  quarto  pamphlet,  anonymous,  price  six- 
pence, entitled  An  Elegy  wrote  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard. It  was  preceded  by  a  short  advertisement,  un- 
signed, but  written  by  Horace  Walpole.  At  this  point 
may  be  inserted  a  note,  which  Gray  has  appended  in  the 
margin  of  the  Pembroke  MS.  of  this  poem.  It  settles  a 
point  of  bibliography  which  has  been  discussed  by  com- 
mentator after  commentator : 

"  Published  in  Febry,  1751,  by  Dodsley,  &  went  thro'  four  editions, 
in  two  months ;  and  afterwards  a  fifth,  6th,  7th,  &  8th,  9,h,  10th,  &  11th, 
printed  also  in  1753  with  Mr.  Bentley's  Designs,  of  wch  there  is  a  2d 
edition,  &  again  by  Dodsley  in  his  Miscellany  vol.  4th  &  in  a  Scotch 
Collection  call'd  the  Union;  translated  into  Latin  by  Chr:  Anstey, 
Esq.  and  the  Revd  Mr-  Roberts,  &  published  in  1762,  &  again  in  the 
same  year  by  Rob :  Lloyd,  M.A." 

Gray  here  cites  fifteen  authorised  editions  of  the  Eng- 
lish text  of  the  Elegy ;  its  pirated  editions  were  count- 
less. The  Magazine  of  Magazines  persisted,  although 
Gray  had  been  neither  indulgent  nor  correspondent,  and 
the  poem  appeared  in  the  issue  for  February,  published, 
as  was  then  the  habit  of  periodicals,  on  the  last  of  that 
month.  The  London  Magazine  stole  it  for  its  issue  for 
March,  and  the  Grand  Magazine  of  Magazines  copied  it 
in    April.      Everybody   read   it,  in   town    and    country; 


v.]  THE  "ELEGY."  105 

Shenstone,  far  away  from  the  world  of  books,  had  seen  it 
before  the  28th  of  March.  It  achieved  a  complete  popu- 
lar success  from  the  very  first,  and  the  name  of  its  author 
gradually  crept  into  notoriety.  The  attribution  of  the 
Elegy  to  Gray  was  more  general  than  has  been  supposed. 
A  pamphlet,  printed  soon  after  this  date,  speaks  of  "  the 
Maker  of  the  Church-yard  Essay  "  as  being  a  Cambridgo 
celebrity  whose  claims  to  preferment  had  been  notoriously 
overlooked ;  and  by  far  the  cleverest  of  all  the  parodies, 
An  Evening  Contemplation,  1753,  a  poem  of  special  in- 
terest to  students  of  university  manners,  is  preceded  by 
an  elaborate  compliment  to  Gray.  The  success  of  his 
poem,  however,  brought  him  little  direct  satisfaction,  and 
no  money.  He  gave  the  right  of  publication  to  Dods- 
lcy,  as  he  did  in  all  other  instances.  He  had  a  Quixotic 
notion  that  it  was  beneath  a  gentleman  to  take  money 
for  his  inventions  from  a  bookseller,  a  view  in  which 
Dodsley  warmly  coincided;  and  it  was  stated  by  another 
bookseller,  who  after  Gray's  death  contended  with  Mason, 
that  Dodsley  was  known  to  have  made  nearly  a  thousand 
pounds  by  the  poetry  of  Gray.  Mason  had  no  such 
scruples  as  his  friend,  and  made  frantic  efforts  to  regain 
Gray's  copyright,  launching  vainly  into  litigation  on  the 
subject,  and  into  unseemly  controversy. 

The  autumn  of  1750  had  been  marked  in  Gray's  un- 
eventful annals  by  the  death  of  Dr.  Middlcton,  and  by 
the  visit  of  a  troublesome  Indian  cousin,  Mrs.  Forster, 
who  stayed  a  month  in  London,  and  wearied  Gray  by  her 
insatiable  craving  after  sight-seeing.  In  Conyers  Middle- 
ton,  who  died  on  the  28th  of  July,  1750,  at  the  age  of 
sixty-seven,  Gray  lost  one  of  his  most  familiar  and  most 
intellectual  associates,  a  person  of  extraordinary  talents,  to 
whom,  without  ever  becoming  attached,  he  had  becomo 


106  GRAY.  [chap, 

accustomed.  His  remark  on  the  event  is  full  of  his  fine 
reserve  and  sobriety  of  feeling:  "You  have  doubtless 
heard  of  the  loss  I  have  had  in  Dr.  Middleton,  whose 
house  was  the  only  easy  place  one  could  find  to  converse 
in  at  Cambridge.  For  my  part,  I  find  a  friend  so  uncom- 
mon a  thing,  that  I  cannot  help  regretting  even  an  old 
acquaintance,  which  is  an  indifferent  likeness  of  it;  and 
though  I  don't  approve  the  spirit  of  his  books,  methinks 
'tis  pity  the  world  should  lose  so  rare  a  thing  as  a  good 
writer." 

In  the  same  letter  he  tells  Wharton  that  he  himself  is 
neither  cheerful  nor  easy  in  bodily  health,  and  yet  has  the 
mortification  to  find  his  spiritual  part  the  most  infirm 
thing  about  him.  He  is  applying  himself  heartily  to  the 
study  of  zoology,  and  has  procured  for  that  purpose  the 
works  of  M.  de  Buffon.  In  reply  to  Wharton's  urgent 
entreaties  for  a  visit  he  agrees  that  he  "could  indeed  wish 
to  refresh  my  ivepyiia  a  little  at  Durham  by  a  sight  of 
you,  but  when  is  there  a  probability  of  my  being  so  hap- 
py ?"  However,  it  seems  that  he  would  have  contrived 
this  expedition,  had  it  not  been  for  the  aforesaid  cousin, 
Mrs.  Forster,  "a  person  as  strange,  and  as  much  to  seek, 
as  though  she  had  been  born  in  the  mud  of  the  Ganges." 
At  the  same  time  he  warns  Wharton  against  returning:  to 
Cambridge,  saying  that  Mrs.  Wharton  will  find  life  very 
dreary  in  a  place  where  women  are  so  few,  and  those 
"  squeezy  and  formal,  little  skilled  in  amusing  themselves 
or  other  people.  All  I  can  say  is,  she  must  try  to  make 
up  for  it  amongst  the  men,  who  are  not  over-agreeable 
neither." 

In  spite  of  this  warning  the  Whartons  appear  to  have 
come  back  to  Cambridge.  At  all  events,  we  find  Dr. 
Wharton  wavering  between  that  town  and  Bath  as  the 


v.]  THE  "ELEGY."  107 

best  place  for  him  to  practise  in  as  a  physician,  and  there- 
upon there  follows  a  gap  of  two  years  in  Gray's  corre- 
spondence with  him.  The  affectionate  familiarity  of  the 
poet  with  both  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Wharton  when  they  re-emerge 
in  his  correspondence,  the  pet  names  he  has  for  the  chil- 
dren, and  the  avuncular  air  of  intimacy  implied,  make  it 
almost  certain  that  in  1751  and  1752  he  had  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  these  dear  friends  settled  at  his  side,  and  enjoyed 
in  their  family  circle  the  warmth  and  brightness  of  a 
home.  At  all  events,  after  the  publication  of  the  Elegy, 
Gray  is  once  more  lost  to  us  for  two  years,  most  unac- 
countably, since,  if  the  Whartons  were  close  beside  him, 
and  Mason  across  the  street  at  Pembroke,  Walpole  all  this 
time  was  exercising  his  vivacious  and  importunate  pen  at 
Strawberry  Hill,  aud  trying  to  associate  Gray  in  all  his 
schemes  and  fancies. 

One  of  Walpole's  sudden  wrhims  was  a  friendship  for 
that  eccentric  and  dissipated  person,  Richard  Bentley,  only 
son  of  the  famous  Master  of  Trinity,  whose  acquaintance 
Walpole  made  in  1750.  This  man  was  an  amateur  artist 
of  more  than  usual  talent,  an  elegant  scholar  in  his  way, 
and  with  certain  frivolous  gifts  of  manner  that  were  alter- 
nately pleasing  and  displeasing  to  Walpole.  The  artistic 
merit  of  Bentley  was  exaggerated  in  his  own  time  and 
has  been  underrated  since,  nor  does  there  now  exist  any 
important  relic  of  it  except  his  designs  for  Gray's  poems. 
In  the  summer  of  1752  Horace  Walpole  seems  to  have 
suggested  to  Dodsley  the  propriety  of  publishing  an  edi- 
tion de  luxe  of  Gray,  with  Bentley's  illustrations ;  but  as 
early  as  June,  1751,  these  illustrations  were  being  made. 
As  Gray  gave  the  poems  for  nothing,  and  as  Walpole  paid 
Bentley  to  draw  and  Miiller  to  engrave  the  illustrations, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  Dodsley  was  eager  to  close  with 


108  GRAY.  [chap. 

the  offer.  Bentley  threw  himself  warmly  into  the  project ; 
it  is  quite  certain  that  he  consulted  Gray  step  by  step,  for 
the  designs  show  an  extraordinary  attention  to  the  details 
and  even  to  the  hints  of  the  text.  Most  probably  the 
three  gentlemen  amused  themselves  during  the  long  va- 
cation of  1752  by  concocting  the  whole  thing  together. 
Gray,  who,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  a  connoisseur  in 
painting,  was  so  much  impressed  by  Bentley's  talents  and 
versatility,  that  he  addressed  to  him  a  copy  of  beautiful 
verses,  which  unfortunately  existed  only  in  a  single  manu- 
script, and  had  been  torn  before  Mason  found  them.  In 
these  he  says : 

"  The  tardy  rhymes  that  used  to  linger  on, 
To  censure  cold,  and  negligent  of  fame, 
In  swifter  measures  animated  run, 
And  catch  a  lustre  from  his  genuine  flame. 

"Ah  !  could  they  catch  his  strength,  his  easy  grace, 
His  quick  creation,  his  unerring  line, 
The  energy  of  Pope  they  might  efface, 
And  Dryden's  harmony  submit  to  mine. 

"  But  not  to  one  in  this  benighted  age 
Is  that  diviner  inspiration  given, 
That  burns  in  Shakspeare's  or  in  Milton's  page, 
The  pomp  and  prodigality  of  heaven. 

"  As  when,  conspiring  in  the  diamond's  blaze, 
The  meaner  gems  that  singly  charm  the  sight 
Together  dart  their  intermingled  rays, 
And  dazzle  with  a  luxury  of  light." 

This  is  the  Landorian  manner  of  praising,  and  almost 
the  only  instance  of  a  high  note  of  enthusiasm  in  the  en- 
tire writings  of  Gray.  Bentley  was  not  ludicrously  un- 
worthy of  such  eulogy ;  his  designs  are  extremely  remark 


v.]  SIX  POEMS.  L09 

able  in  their  way.  In  an  age  entirely  given  up  to  pom- 
posed  and  conventional  forms  he  seems  to  have  drawn 
from  nature  and  to  have  studied  the  figure  from  life. 

Early  in  March,  1753,  the  Pocmata-Grayo-Bentleiana,  as 
Walpole  called  them,  appeared,  a  small,  thin  folio,  on  very 
thick  paper,  printed  only  on  one  side,  and  entitled  Designs 
by  Mr.  R.  Bentley  for  Six  Poems  by  Mr.  T.  Gray.  This  is 
the  editio  princeps  of  Gray's  collected  poems,  and  consists 
of  the  Ode  to  Spring  (here  simply  called  Ode),  and  of  the 
Ode  on  the  Death  of  a  Favourite  Cat,  of  both  of  which  it 
was  the  second  edition  ;  a  third  edition  of  the  Eton  Ode ;  a 
first  appearance  of  A  Long  Story  and  Hymn  to  Adversity  ; 
and  a  twelfth  edition  of  the  Elegy  written  in  a  Country 
Church-yard.  Bcntley's  illustrations  consist  of  a  frontis- 
piece, and  a  full-page  design  for  each  poem,  with  head- 
pieces, tail-pieces,  and  initial  letters.  The  frontispiece  is  a 
border  of  extremely  ingenious  rococo  ornament  surround- 
ing a  forest  glade,  in  which  Gray,  a  graceful  little  figure, 
sits  in  a  pensive  attitude.  This  has  a  high  value  for  us, 
since,  to  any  one  accustomed  to  the  practice  of  art,  it  is 
obvious  that  this  is  a  sketch  from  life,  not  a  composed 
study,  and  we  have  here  in  all  probability  a  portrait  of  the 
poet  in  his  easiest  attitude.  The  figure  is  that  of  a  young 
man,  of  small  stature,  but  elegantly  made,  with  a  melan- 
choly and  downcast  countenance. 

The  portraiture  becomes  still  more  certain  when  we  turn 
to  the  indiscreet,  but  extremely  interesting,  design  for  A 
Long  Story,  where  we  not  only  have  a  likeness  of  Gray  in 
1753,  which  singularly  resembles  the  more  elaborate  por- 
trait of  him  painted  by  Eckhardt  in  1747,  but  we  have 
also  Lady  Schaub,  Mr.  Purt,  and,  what  is  most  interesting 
of  all,  the  pretty,  delicate  features  of  Miss  Speed.  The 
Rev.  Mr.  Purt  is  represented  as  blowing  the  trumpet  of 


110  GRAY.  [chap. 

Fame,  whilst  the  Amazon  ladies  fly  through  the  air,  seek- 
ing for  their  victim  the  poet,  who  is  being  concealed  by  the 
Muses  otherwhere  than  in  a  gorge  of  Parnassus.  The  de- 
signs are  engraved  on  copper  by  two  well-known  men  of 
that  day.  The  best  are  by  John  Sebastian  Miiller,  some  of 
whose  initial  letters  are  simply  exquisite  in  execution ;  the 
rest  are  the  work  of  a  man  of  greater  reputation  in  that 
day,  Charles  Grignion,  whose  work  in  this  instance  lacks 
the  refinement  of  Miiller's,  which  is  indeed  of  a  very  high 
order.  Grignion  was  the  last  survivor  amongst  persons  as- 
sociated with  the  early  and  middle  life  of  Gray ;  he  lived 
to  be  nearly  a  hundred  years  old,  and  died  as  late  as  1810. 
It  might  be  supposed  that  the  merits  of  the  designs  to  the 
Six  Poems  lay  in  the  interpretation  given  by  engravers  of 
so  much  talent  to  poor  drawings,  but  we  happen  to  pos- 
sess Gray's  implicit  statement  that  this  was  not  the  case. 
If,  therefore,  we  are  to  consider  Bentley  responsible,  for 
instance,  for  such  realistic  forms  as  the  nude  figures  in  the 
head-piece  to  the  Hymn  to  Adversity,  or  for  such  feeling 
for  foliage  as  is  shown  in  the  head  and  tail  pieces  to  the 
first  ode,  we  must  claim  for  him  a  higher  place  in  English 
art  than  has  hitherto  been  conceded  to  him.  At  all  events 
the  Six  Poems  of  1753  is  one  of  the  few  really  beautiful 
books  produced  from  au  English  press  during  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  in  spite  of  its  rococo  style 
it  is  still  a  desirable  possession. 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  Gray  reclining  in  the  blue  par- 
lour over  the  supper-room  at  Strawberry  Hill,  turning  over 
prints  with  Horace  Walpolc,  and  glancing  down  the  gar- 
den to  the  Thames  that  flashed  in  silver  behind  the  syrin- 
gas  and  honeysuckles ;  or  seated,  with  a  little  touch  of  sen- 
tentious gravity,  in  the  library,  chiding  Chute  and  their 
host  for  their  frivolous  taste  in  heraldry,  or  incited   by 


v.]  DEATH  OF  GRAY'S  MOTHER.  Ill 

the  dark  panels  and  the  old  brass  grate  to  chat  of  archi- 
tecture and  decoration,  and  the  new-found  mysteries  of 
Gothic.  It  is,  perhaps,  plcasanter  still  to  think  of  him 
dreaming  in  the  garden  of  Stoke-Pogis,  or  chatting  over  a 
dish  of  tea  with  his  old  aunts,  as  he  called  his  mother  and 
his  aunt  collectively,  or  strolling,  with  a  book  in  his  hand, 
along  the  southward  ridge  of  meadows  to  pay  Lady  Cob- 
ham  a  stately  call,  or  flirt  a  little  with  Miss  Harriet  Speed. 

But  this  quietude  was  not  to  last  much  longer.  Wal- 
polc,  indeed,  was  surprised  to  have  a  visit  from  him  in 
January,  1753,  just  when  Bentley's  prints  were  going  to 
press,  for  Gray  had  been  suddenly  called  up  from  Cam- 
bridge to  Stoke  by  the  news  of  his  mother's  illness.  He 
had  not  expected  to  find  her  alive,  but  when  he  arrived 
she  was  much  better,  and  remained  so  for  more  than  a 
month.  He  did  not  choose,  however,  to  leave  her,  and 
was  at  Stoke  when  the  proof  of  Bentley's  cul-de-lampe  for 
the  Elegy  arrived.  This  represents  a  village  funeral ;  and 
being  examined  by  the  old  ladies,  was  conceived  by  them 
to  be  a  burying-ticket.  They  asked  him  whether  any- 
body had  left  him  a  ring ;  and  hereupon  follows  a  remark 
which  shows  that  Gray  had  never  mentioned  to  his  mother 
or  either  of  his  aunts  that  he  wrote  verses  ;  nor  would 
now  do  so,  lest  they  should  "  burn  me  for  a  poet."  A 
week  or  two  later,  Walpole  and  Gray  very  nearly  had  an- 
other quarrel.  Walpole,  in  his  officiousness,  had  had  Eck- 
hardt's  portrait  of  Gray,  which  hung  in  the  library  at 
Strawberry  Hill,  engraved  for  the  Six  Poems,  a  step  which, 
taken  as  it  was  without  the  poet's  cognizance,  drew  down 
on  Walpole  an  excessively  sharp  letter — "  Gray  does  not 
hate  to  find  fault  with  me" — and  a  final  veto  on  any  such 
parade  of  personality. 

Mrs.  Gray  soon  ceased  to  rally,  and  after  a  painful  strug- 
6 


112  GRAY.  [chap. 

gle  for  life,  expired  on  the  11th  of  March,  1753,  at  the  age 
of  sixty-seven.  Her  son  saw  her  buried,  in  the  family 
tomb,  on  the  south  side  of  the  church -yard,  near  the 
church,  where  may  still  be  read  the  exquisitely  simple  and 
affecting  epitaph  which  he  inscribed  on  her  tombstone : 

"  In  the  same  pious  confidence,  beside  her  friend  and  sister,  here 
sleep  the  remains  of  Dorothy  Gray,  widow,  the  careful,  tender  mother 
of  many  children,  one  of  whom  alone  had  the  misfortune  to  survive 
her." 

When,  a  few  months  later,  Mason  had  been  standing  by 
the  death-bed  of  his  father,  and  spoke  to  his  friend  of  the 
awe  that  he  experienced,  Gray's  thoughts  went  back  to  his 
mother,  and  he  wrote :  "  I  have  seen  the  scene  you  de- 
scribe, and  know  how  dreadful  it  is :  I  know  too  I  am  the 
better  for  it.  We  are  all  idle  and  thoughtless  things,  and 
have  no  sense,  no  use  in  the  world  any  longer  than  that 
sad  impression  lasts ;  the  deeper  it  is  engraved  the  better." 
These  are  the  words  which  came  into  Byron's  memory 
when  he  received  the  news  of  his  mother's  death. 

The  Whartons  had  by  this  time  returned  to  Durham, 
and  thither  at  last,  in  the  autumn  of  1753,  Gray  resolved 
to  visit  them.  He  had  been  unable  to  remain  at  Stoke 
now  that  it  was  haunted  by  the  faces  of  the  dead  that  he 
had  loved,  and  he  went  into  these  lodgings  over  the  ho- 
sier's shop  in  the  eastern  part  of  Jermyn  Street,  which  were 
his  favourite  haunt  in  London.  He  left  town  for  Cam- 
bridge in  May,  and  in  June  wrote  to  Wharton  to  say  that 
he  was  at  last  going  to  set  out  with  Stonehewer  in  a  post- 
chaise  for  the  North.  In  the  middle  of  July  they  started, 
proceeding  leisurely  by  Belvoir,  Burleigh,  and  York,  taking 
a  week  to  reach  Studley.  The  journey  was  very  agree- 
able, and  every  place  on  the  route  which  offered  anything 
curious  in  architecture,  the  subject  at  this  moment  most  in 


T.]  DEATH  OF  GRAY'S  MOTHER.  113 

Gray's  thoughts,  was  visited  and  described  in  the  note- 
book. Gray  remained  for  two  whole  months  and  more 
in  Dr.  Wharton's  house  at  Durham,  associating  with  the 
Bishop,  Dr.  Trevor,  and  having  "  one  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful vales  in  England  to  walk  in,  with  prospects  that  change 
every  ten  steps,  and  open  something  new  wherever  I  turn 
me,  all  rude  and  romantic."  It  had  been  proposed  that 
on  the  return  journey  he  should  visit  Mason  at  Hull,  but 
the  illness  of  that  gentleman's  father  prevented  this  scheme, 
and  the  friends  met  at  York  instead.  Gray  travelled  south- 
wards for  two  days  with  "  a  Lady  Swinburne,  a  Roman 
Catholic,  not  young,  that  has  been  much  abroad,  seen  a 
great  deal,  knew  a  great  many  people,  very  chatty  and 
communicative,  so  that  I  passed  my  time  very  well."  I 
regret  that  the  now-living:  and  illustrious  descendant  of 
this  amusing  lady  is  unable  to  tell  me  anything  definite 
of  her  history. 

Gray  came  back  to  Cambridge  to  find  the  lime-trees 
changing  colour,  stayed  there  one  day,  and  was  just  pre- 
paring to  proceed  to  his  London  lodgings,  when  an  express 
summoned  him  to  Stoke,  where  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Rogers,  had 
suffered  a  stroke  of  the  palsy.  He  arrived  on  the  Cth  of 
October,  to  find  everything  "  resounding  with  the  wood- 
lark  and  robin,  and  the  voice  of  the  sparrow  heard  in 
the  land."  His  aunt,  who  wTas  in  her  seventy-eighth  year, 
had  rallied  to  a  surprising  degree,  and  her  recovery  was 
not  merely  temporary.  It  would  seem,  from  an  expres- 
sion in  one  of  his  letters,  that  his  paternal  aunt,  Mrs. 
Oliffe,  had  now  gone  down  from  Norwich  to  Stoke,  to 
live  with  Mrs.  Rogers.  I  do  not  remember  that  the  his- 
tory of  literature  presents  us  with  the  memoirs  of  any 
other  poet  favoured  by  nature  with  so  many  aunts  as  Gray 
possessed.      Stoke  was  not  a  home  for  Gray  with  Mrs. 


114  GRAY.  [chap. 

Rogers  bedridden  and  with  Mrs.  Oliffe  for  its  other  in- 
mate.  The  hospitable  Whartons  seem  again  to  bave  taken 
pity  on  him,  and  he  went  from  Jermyn  Street  up  to  Dur- 
ham to  spend  with  them  Christmas  of  this  same  year,  1753. 
Walpole  remarked  that  Gray  was  "in  flower"  during 
these  years,  1750-55.  It  was  the  blossoming  of  a  shrub 
which  throws  out  only  one  bud  each  season,  and  that  bud 
sometimes  nipped  by  an  untimely  frost.  The  rose  on 
Gray's  thorn  for  1754  was  an  example  of  these  blighted 
flowers  that  never  fully  expanded.  The  Ode  on  Vicissi- 
tude, which  was  found,  after  the  poet's  death,  in  a  pocket- 
book  of  that  year,  should  have  been  one  of  his  finest  pro- 
ductions, but  it  is  unrevised,  and  hopelessly  truncated. 
Poor  Mason  rushed  in  where  a  truer  poet  might  have 
feared  to  tread,  and  clipped  the  straggling  lines,  and 
finished  it ;  six  complete  stanzas,  however,  are  the  gen- 
uine work  of  Gray.  The  verse-form  has  a  catch  in  the 
third  line,  which  is,  perhaps,  the  most  delicate  metrical 
effect  Gray  ever  attained ;  whilst  some  of  the  nature-paint- 
ing in  the  poem  is  really  exquisite  : 

"  New-born  flocks,  in  rustic  dance, 

Frisking  ply  their  feeble  feet ; 
Forgetful  of  their  wintry  trance, 

The  birds  his  presence  greet ; 
But  chief  the  skylark  warbles  high 
His  trembling,  thrilling  ecstasy, 
And,  lessening  from  the  dazzled  sight, 
Melts  into  air  and  liquid  light." 

Here  is  a  stanza  which  might  almost  be  Wordsworth's : 

"  See  the  wretch,  that  long  has  tost 
On  the  thorny  bed  of  pain, 
At  length  repair  his  vigour  lost, 
And  breathe  and  walk  again  : 


v]  THE  "ODE  ON  VICISSITUDE."  115 

The  meanest  floweret  of  the  vale, 
The  simplest  note  that  swells  the  gale, 
The  common  sun,  the  air,  the  skies, 
To  him  are  opening  paradise." 

That  graceful  trifler  with  metre,  the  sprightly  Gresset, 
had  written  an  JEjntre  a  ma  Socur  to  which  Gray  frankly 
avowed  that  he  owed  the  idea  of  his  poem  on  Vicissitude. 
But  it  was  only  a  few  commonplaces  which  the  English 
poet  borrowed  from  the  French  one,  who  might,  indeed, 
remind  him  that — 

"  Mille  spectacles,  qu'autrefois 
On  voyait  avec  nonchalance, 
Transported  aujourd'hui,  presentant  des  appas 
Inconnus  a,  l'indifference" — 

but  was  quite  incapable  of  Gray's  music  and  contempla- 
tive felicities.  This  Ode  on  Vicissitude  seems,  in  some 
not  very  obvious  way,  to  be  connected  with  the  death  of 
Pope.  It  is  possible  that  these  were  the  "  few  autumn 
verses  "  which  Gray  began  to  write  on  that  occasion.  His 
manner  of  composition,  his  slow,  half-hearted,  desultory 
touch,  his  whimsical  fits  of  passing  inspiration,  are  unique 
in  their  kind  ;  there  never  was  a  professional  poet  whose 
mode  was  so  thoroughly  that  of  the  amateur. 

A  short  prose  treatise,  first  printed  in  1814,  and  named 
by  the  absurd  Mathias  Architectura  Gothica,  although  the 
subject  of  it  is  purely  Norman  architecture,  seems  to  be- 
long to  this  year,  1754.  Gray  was  the  first  man  in  Eng- 
land to  understand  architecture  scientifically,  and  his  taste 
was  simply  too  pure  to  be  comprehended  in  an  age  that 
took  William  Kent  for  its  architectural  prophet.  Even 
amongst  those  persons  of  refined  feeling  who  desired  to 
cultivate  a  taste  for  old  English  buildings  there  was  a  sad 
absence  of  exact  knowledge.     Akenside  thought  that  tho 


116  GRAY.  [chap.  v. 

ruins  of  Persepolis  formed  a  beautiful  example  of  the 
Gothic  style ;  and  we  know  that  Horace  Walpole  dazzled 
his  contemporaries  with  the  gimcrack  pinnacles  of  Straw- 
berry Hill.  We  may  see  from  Bentley's  frontispiece  to 
the  Elegy,  where  a  stucco  moulding  is  half  torn  away,  and 
reveals  a  pointed  arch  of  brick-work,  that  even  amongst 
the  elect  the  true  principles  of  Gothic  architecture  were 
scarcely  understood.  What  Georgian  amateurs  really  ad- 
mired was  a  grotto  with  cockle-shells  and  looking-glass, 
such  as  the  Greathcads  made  at  Guy's  Cliff,  or  such  fol- 
lies in  foliage  as  Shenstone  perpetrated  at  Leasowes.  Gray 
strove  hard  to  clear  his  memory  of  all  such  trifling,  and 
to  arm  his  reason  against  arguments  such  as  those  of  Po- 
cocke,  who  held  that  the  Gothic  arch  was  a  degradation 
of  the  Moorish  cupola,  or  of  Batty  Langley,  who  invented 
five  orders  in  a  new  style  of  his  own.  Gray's  treatise  on 
Norman  architecture  is  so  sound  and  learned  that  it  is 
much  to  be  regretted  that  he  has  not  left  us  more  of  his 
architectural  essays.  He  formed  his  opinions  from  per- 
sonal observation  and  measurement.  Amongst  the  Pem- 
broke MSS.  there  are  copious  notes  of  a  tour  in  the  Fens, 
during  which  he  jotted  down  the  characteristics  of  all  the 
principal  minsters,  as  far  as  Crowland  and  Boston.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  Gray  was  the  first  modern  stu- 
dent of  the  history  of  architecture.  Norton  Nichols  has 
recorded  that  when  certain  would-be  people  of  taste  were 
wrangling  about  the  style  in  which  some  ancient  building 
was  constructed,  Gray  cut  the  discussion  short  by  saying, 
in  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  Call  it  what  you  please,  but 
allow  that  it  is  beautiful."  He  did  not  approve  of  Wal- 
pole's  Gothic  constructions  at  Strawberry  Hill,  and  frankly 
told  him,  when  he  was  shown  tins  gilding  and  the  glass, 
that  he  had  "  degenerated  into  finery." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    PINDARIC    ODES. 

It  is  not  known  at  what  time  Gray  resolved  on  composing 
poems  which  should  resemble  in  stanzaic  structure  the  tri- 
umphal odes  or  epinikia  of  Pindar,  but  it  is  certain  that  to- 
wards the  close  of  1754  he  completed  one  such  elaborate 
lyric.  On  the  26th  of  December  of  that  year  he  gave  the 
finishing  touches  to  an  "  ode  in  the  Greek  manner,"  and 
sent  it  from  Cambridge  to  Dr.  Wharton,  with  the  remark, 
"  If  this  be  as  tedious  to  you  as  it  is  grown  to  me,  I  shall 
be  sorry  that  I  sent  it  you.  ...  I  desire  you  would  by 
no  means  suffer  this  to  be  copied,  nor  even  show  it,  unless 
to  very  few,  and  especially  not  to  mere  scholars,  that  can 
scan  all  the  measures  in  Pindar,  and  say  the  scholia  by 
heart."  Months  later  Mason  was  pleading  for  a  copy,  but 
in  vain.  The  poem  thrown  off  so  indifferently  was  that 
now  known  to  us  as  The  Progress  of  Poesy,  and  it  marked 
a  third  and  final  stage  in  Gray's  poetical  development.  In 
the  early  odes  he  had  written  for  his  contemporaries;  in 
the  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church-yard  he  had  written  for 
all  the  world ;  in  the  Pindaric  Odes  he  was  now  to  write 
for  poets.  In  the  Elegy  he  had  dared  to  leave  those  trod- 
den paths  of  phraseology  along  which  the  critics  of  the 
hour,  the  quibbling  Hurds  and  Warburtons,  could  follow 
him  step  by  step,  but  his  startling  felicities  had  carried  his 


118  GRAY.  [chap. 

readers  captive  by  their  appeal  to  a  common  humanity. 
He  was  now  about  to  launch  upon  a  manner  of  writing  in 
which  he  could  no  longer  be  accompanied  by  the  plaudits 
of  the  vulgar,  and  where  his  style  could  no  longer  appeal 
with  security  to  the  sympathy  of  the  critics.  He  was  now, 
in  other  words,  about  to  put  out  his  most  original  qualities 
in  poetry. 

That  he  could  not  hope  for  popularity  he  was  aware  at 
the  outset :  "  Be  assured,"  he  consoled  his  friends,  "  that 
my  taste  for  praise  is  not  like  that  of  children  for  fruit ; 
if  there  were  nothing  but  medlars  and  blackberries  in  the 
world,  I  could  be  very  well  content  to  go  without  any  at 
all."  He  could  wait  patiently  for  the  suffrage  of  his  peers. 
The  very  construction  of  the  poem  was  a  puzzle  to  his 
friends,  although  it  is  one  of  the  most  intelligibly  and 
rationally  built  of  all  the  odes  in  the  language.  It  is,  in 
point  of  fact,  a  poem  of  three  stanzas,  in  an  elaborately 
consistent  verse-form,  with  forty-one  lines  in  each  stanza. 
The  length  of  these  periods  is  relieved  by  the  regular  di- 
vision of  each  stanza  into  strophe,  antistrophe,  and  epode, 
the  same  plan  having  been  used  by  no  previous  English 
poet  but  Congreve,  who  had  written  in  1*705  a  learned  and 
graceful  Discourse  on  the  Pindarique  Ode,  which  Gray  was 
possibly  acquainted  with.  Congreve's  practice,  however, 
had  been  as  unsatisfactory  as  his  theory  was  excellent, 
and' Gray  was  properly  the  first  poet  to  comprehend  and 
follow  the  mode  of  Pindar. 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  pointed  out  that  the  evolution 
of  The  Progress  of  Poesy  is  no  less  noble  and  sound  than 
its  style.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  power  of  evolu- 
tion has  not  been  common  amongst  lyrical  poets  even  of  a 
high  rank.  Even  in  Milton  it  is  strangely  absent,  and  we 
feel  that  all  his  odes,  beautiful  as  they  are,  do  not  bud  and 


vi. J  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  119 

branch  and  fall  in  fruit,  closing  with  the  exhaustion  of 
their  functions,  but  merely  cease,  because  all  poems  must 
stop  somewhere.  The  Nativity  Ode  does  not  close  because 
the  poet  has  nothing  more  to  say,  but  merely  because  "  'tis 
time  our  tedious  song  should  here  have  ending."  In  Col- 
lins, surely,  we  find  the  same  failing ;  the  poem  is  a  burst 
of  emotion,  but  not  an  organism.  The  much-lauded  Ode 
to  Liberty,  with  its  opening  peal  of  trumpet-music,  ends 
with  a  foolish  abruptness,  as  if  the  poet  had  got  tired  of 
his  instrument  and  had  thrown  it  away.  Shelley,  again,  in 
his  longer  odes,  seems  to  lose  himself  in  beautiful,  mean- 
dering oratory,  and  to  stop,  as  he  began,  in  response  to  a 
mere  change  of  purpose.  Keats,  on  the  other  hand,  is  al- 
ways consistent  in  his  evolution,  and  so  is  Wordsworth  at 
his  more  elevated  moments;  the  same  may  even  be  re- 
marked of  a  poet  infinitely  below  these  in  intellectual 
value,  Edgar  Poe.  Gray,  however,  is  the  main  example 
in  our  literature  of  a  poet  possessing  this  Greek  quality 
of  structure  in  his  lyrical  work,  and  it  is  to  be  noted  that 
throughout  his  career  it  never  left  him,  even  on  occasions 
when  he  was  deserted  by  every  other  form  of  inspiration. 
His  poems,  whatever  they  are,  are  never  chains  of  consecu- 
tive stanzas ;  each  line,  each  group  of  lines,  has  its  proper 
place  in  a  structure  that  could  not  be  shorter  or  longer 
without  a  radical  re-arrangement  of  ideas. 

The  strophe  of  the  opening  stanza  of  The  Progress  of 
Poesy  invokes  that  lyre  of  ./Eolian  strings,  the  breathings 
of  those  JEolian  flutes,  which  Pindar  had  made  the  symbol 
of  the  art  of  poetry,  and  the  sources,  progress,  and  various 
motion  of  that  art,  "  enriching  every  subject  with  a  pomp 
of  diction  and  luxuriant  harmony  of  numbers,"  are  de- 
scribed under  the  image  of  a  thousand  descending  streauis. 
The  antistrophe  returns  to  the  consideration  of  the  power 
I     6*  '& 


120  GRAY.  [chap. 

of  poetry,  not  now  in  motion,  but  an  alluring  and  sooth- 
ing force  around  which  the  Passions  throng  and  are  sub- 
dued, a  thought  being  here  borrowed  apparently  from 
Collins;  the  epode  continues  and  combines  these  two 
strains  of  thought,  and  shows  that  poetry,  whether  in 
motion  or  at  rest,  is  working  the  good-will  of  Love,  who 
deigns  herself  to  move  in  a  rhythmic  harmony  and  be  the 
slave  of  verse.  In  the  second  stanza  the  strophe  recalls  the 
miserable  state  of  man,  relieved  by  the  amenities  of  the 
heavenly  Muse,  who  arms  Hyperion  against  the  sickly  com- 
pany of  Night ;  the  antistrophe  shows  us  how  the  need  of 
song  arose  in  savage  man,  and  illuminated  "their  feather- 
cinctured  chiefs  and  dusky  loves"  whilst  the  epode  breaks 
into  an  ecstatic  celebration  of  the  advent  of  poetic  art  to 

Greece : 

"  Woods,  that  wave  o'er  Delphi's  steep, 
Isle3,  that  crown  th'  JSgean  deep, 

Fields,  that  cool  Ilissus  laves, 

Or  where  Mseander's  amber  waves 
In  lingering  labyrinths  creep, 

How  do  your  tuneful  echoes  languish, 

Mute  but  to  the  voice  of  anguish  I 
Where  each  old  poetic  mountain 

Inspiration  breathed  around ; 
Every  shade  and  hallowed  fountain 

Murmured  deep  a  solemn  sound." 

But  the  Muses,  "in  Greece's  evil  hour,"  went  to  Rome, 
and  "  when  Latium  had  her  lofty  spirit  lost,"  it  was  to 
Albion  that  they  turned  their  steps.  The  third  strophe 
describes  how  the  awful  mother  unveiled  her  face  to  Shak- 
speare ;  the  antistrophe  celebrates  the  advent  of  Milton 
and  Dryden,  whilst  the  final  epode  winds  the  whole  poem 
to  a  close  with  a  regret  that  the  lyre  once  held  by  the  last- 
named  poet  has  degenerated  into  hands  like  Gray's: 


vi.]  THE  riNDARIC  ODES.  121 

"  Hark  !  his  hands  the  lyre  explore ! 

Bright-eyed  Fancy,  hovering  o'er, 

Scatters  from  her  pictured  urn 

Thoughts  that  breathe,  and  words  that  burn. 

But  ah  !  'tis  heard  no  more — 

Oh  !  lyre  divine,  what  daring  spirit 

Wakes  thee  now  ?     Though  he  inherit 
Not  the  pride,  nor  ample  pinion, 

That  the  Theban  eagle  bear, 
Sailing  with  supreme  dominion 

Thro'  the  azure  deep  of  air : 
Yet  oft  before  his  infant  eyes  would  run 

Such  forms  as  glitter  in  the  Muse's  ray, 
With  orient  hues,  unborrowed  of  the  sun : 

Yet  shall  he  mount,  and  keep  his  distant  way 
Beyond  the  limits  of  a  vulgar  fate, 
Beneath  the  Good  how  far ! — but  far  above  the  Great." 

In  these  passages,  especially  where  he  employs  the  double 
rhyme,  we  seem  to  catch  in  Gray  the  true  modern  accent, 
the  precursor  of  the  tones  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  both  of 
whom,  but  especially  the  former,  were  greatly  influenced 
by  this  free  and  ringing  music.  The  reader  has  only  to 
compare  the  epode  last  quoted  with  the  choruses  in  Hellas 
to  see  what  Shelley  owed  to  the  science  and  invention  of 
Gray.  This  manner  of  rhyming,  this  rapid  and  recurrent 
beat  of  song,  was  the  germ  out  of  which  have  sprung  all 
later  metrical  inventions,  and  without  which  Mr.  Swin- 
burne himself  might  now  be  polishing  the  heroic  coup- 
let to  its  last  perfection  of  brightness  and  sharpness. 

Another  Pindaric  ode  on  The  Liberty  of  Genius  was 
planned  about  the  same  time,  but  of  this  there  exists  only 
the  following  fragment  of  an  argument :  "  All  that  men  of 
power  can  do  for  men  of  genius  is  to  leave  them  at  their 
liberty,  compared  to  birds  that,  when  confined  to  a  cage, 
do  but  regret  the  loss  of  their  freedom   in   melancholy 


122  GRAY.  [chap. 

strains,  and  lose  the  luscious  wildness  and  happy  luxuriance 
of  their  notes,  which  used  to  make  the  woods  resound." 
The  subject  is  one  well  fitted  to  its  author's  power,  and 
we  regret  its  loss  as  we  regret  that  of  Collins's  Ode  on  the 
Music  of  the  Grecian  Theatre.  Unlike  that  blue  rose  of 
the  bibliophiles,  however,  Gray's  ode  probably  was  never 
written  at  all. 

In  the  meantime  not  much  was  happening  to  Gray  him- 
self. His  friend  Mason  had  taken  holy  orders,  and  in 
November,  1754,  had  become  rector  of  Ashton  and  chap- 
lain to  the  Earl  of  Holdernesse.  "  We  all  are  mighty  glad," 
says  Gray,  "  that  he  is  in  orders,  and  no  better  than  any 
of  us."  Early  in  1755  both  Mason  and  Walpole  set  upon 
Gray  to  publish  a  new  volume  of  poems,  whereupon  he 
held  up  the  single  ode  On  the  Progress  of  Poesy,  and  ask- 
ed if  they  wished  him  to  publish  a  "  little  sixpenny  flam  " 
like  that,  all  by  itself.  He  threatened  if  Wharton  be  tire- 
some, since  the  publishing  faction  had  gained  him  over  to 
their  side,  to  write  an  ode  against  physicians,  with  some 
very  stringent  lines  about  magnesia  and  alicant  soap. 
Pembroke  meanwhile  had  just  received  an  undergraduate 
of  quality,  Lord  Strathmore,  Thane  of  Glamis,  "  a  tall, 
genteel  figure,"  that  pleased  Gray,  and  presently  was  ad- 
mitted within  the  narrow  circle  of  his  friends. 

According  to  Mason,  the  exordium  of  The  Bard  was 
completed  in  March,  1755,  having  occupied  Gray  for  about 
three  months.  In  the  case  of  this  very  elaborate  poem 
Gray  seems  to  have  laid  aside  his  customary  reticence,  and 
to  have  freely  consulted  his  friends.  Mason  had  seen  the 
beginning  of  it  before  he  went  to  Germany  in  May  of  that 
year,  when  he  found  in  Hamburg  a  literary  lady  who  had 
read  the  "  Nitt  Toats"  of  Young,  and  thought  the  Elegy 
in  a  Country  Church-yard  "bien  jolie  et  melancholique." 


fi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  123 

Mason  at  Hanover  meets  Lord  Nuneham,  and  is  sure  that 
Gray  would  delight  in  him,  because  he  is  so  peevish  and 
sensible  and  so  good  a  hater,  which  gives  us  a  passing 
glance  at  Gray  himself.  The  Bard  was  exactly  two  years 
and  five  months  in  reaching  completion,  and  the  slowness 
of  its  growth  was  the  subject  of  mirth  with  Gray  him- 
self, who  called  it  "  Odikle,"  and  made  fun  of  its  stunted 
proportions. 

On  the  15th  of  July,  1755,  Gray  went  down  to  the 
Vine,  in  Hampshire,  to  visit  his  old  friend  Chute,  who 
was  now  beginning  to  recover  a  little  from  the  shock  of 
the  death  of  his  beloved  heir  and  nephew.  In  the  con- 
genial company  of  the  Italianate  country  gentleman  Gray 
stayed  a  few  days,  and  then  went  on  to  Southampton, 
Winchester,  Portsmouth,  and  Netley  Abbey,  returning  to 
Stoke  on  the  31st  of  July.  Unfortunately,  he  either  took 
a  chill  on  this  little  tour  or  overtaxed  his  powers,  and 
from  this  time  to  the  end  of  his  life,  a  period  of  sixteen 
years,  he  was  seldom  in  a  condition  of  even  tolerable 
health.  In  August  he  was  obliged  to  put  himself  under 
medical  treatment ;  one  alarming  attack  of  gout  after  the 
other  continued  to  undermine  his  constitution,  and  his 
system  was  further  depressed  by  an  exhausting  regimen 
of  magnesia  and  salts  of  wormwood.  He  had  to  lie  up 
at  Stoke  for  many  weeks,  with  aching  feet  and  temples, 
and  was  bled  until  he  was  too  giddy  and  feeble  to  walk 
with  comfort.  All  this  autumn  and  winter  of  1755  his 
symptoms  were  very  serious.  He  could  not  sleep ;  he  was 
troubled  by  a  nervous  deafness,  and  a  pain  in  the  region 
of  the  heart  which  seldom  left  him.  Meanwhile,  he  did 
not  leave  The  Bard  untouched,  but  progressed  slowly  with 
it,  as  though  he  were  a  sculptor,  deliberately  pointing  and 
chiselling  a  statue.     He  adopted  the  plan  of  copying  stro- 


124  GRAY.  [chap. 

phes  and  fragments  of  it  in  his  letters,  and  many  such 
scraps  exist  in  MS.  Late  in  the  autumn,  however,  he 
thought  that  he  was  falling  into  a  decline,  and  in  a  fit 
of  melancholy  he  laid  The  Bard  aside. 

Gray  was  altogether  in  a  very  nervous,  distracted  con- 
dition at  this  time,  and  first  began  to  show  symptoms  of 
that  fear  of  fire  which  afterwards  became  almost  a  mania 
with  him,  by  desiring  Wharton  to  insure  the  two  houses, 
at  Wanstead  and  in  Cornhill,  which  formed  a  principal 
part  of  his  income.  From  the  amount  of  the  policies  of 
these  houses,  we  can  infer  that  the  first  was  a  property  of 
considerable  value.  The  death  of  his  mother,  following 
on  that  of  Miss  Antrobus,  had,  it  may  here  be  remarked, 
removed  all  pressure  of  poverty  from  Gray  for  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life.  He  was  never  rich,  but  from  this 
time  forward  he  was  very  comfortably  provided  for. 
Horace  Walpole  appears  to  have  been  alarmed  at  his 
friend's  condition  of  health,  and  planned  a  change  of 
scene  for  him,  which  it  seems  unfortunate  that  he  could 
not  persuade  himself  to  undertake.  George  Hervey,  Earl 
of  Bristol,  was  named  English  Minister  at  Lisbon,  and  he 
offered  to  take  Gray  with  him  as  his  secretary,  but  the 
proud  little  poet  refused.  Perhaps  the  climate  of  Portu- 
gal might  have  proved  too  relaxing  for  him,  and  he  might 
have  laid  his  bones  beside  that  grave  where  the  grass  was 
hardly  green  yet  over  the  body  of  Fielding. 

Gray's  terror  of  fire  has  already  been  alluded  to,  and  it 
had  now  become  so  marked  as  to  be  a  subject  of  conver- 
sation in  the  college.  He  professed  rather  openly  to  be- 
lieve that  some  drunken  fellow  or  other  would  burn  the 
college  down  about  their  heads.  On  the  9th  of  January, 
1756,  he  asked  Dr.  Wharton  to  buy  him  a  rope-ladder  of 
a  man  in  Wapping  who  advertised  such  articles.     Tt  was 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  125 

to  be  rather  more  than  thirty-six  feet  long,  with  strong 
hooks  at  the  top.  This  machine  Wharton  promptly  for- 
warded, and  Gray  proceeded  to  have  an  iron  bar  fixed 
within  his  bedroom-window.  This  bar,  crossing  a  window 
which  looks  towards  Pembroke,  still  exists  and  marks 
Gray's  chambers  at  Peterhouse.  Such  preparations,  how- 
ever, could  not  be  made  without  attracting  great  attention 
in  the  latter  college,  where  Gray  was  by  no  means  a  fa- 
vourite amongst  the  high-coloured  young  gentlemen  who 
went  bull-baiting  to  Heddington,  or  came  home  drunk 
and  roaring  from  a  cock-shying  at  Market  Hill.  Accord- 
ingly, the  noisy  fellow -commoners  determined  to  have  a 
lark  at  the  timid  little  poet's  expense,  and  one  night  in 
February,  1756,  when  Gray  was  asleep  in  bed,  they  sud- 
denly alarmed  him  with  a  cry  of  fire  on  his  staircase,  hav- 
ing previously  placed  a  tub  of  water  under  his  window. 
The  ruse  succeeded  only  too  well :  Gray,  without  staying 
to  put  on  his  clothes,  hooked  his  rope-ladder  to  the  iron 
bar,  and  descended  nimbly  into  the  tub  of  water,  from 
which  he  was  rescued,  with  shouts  of  laughter,  by  the  un- 
mannerly youths.  But  the  jest  might  easily  have  proved 
fatal ;  as  it  was,  he  shivered  in  the  February  air  so  exces- 
sively that  he  had  to  be  wrapped  in  the  coat  of  a  passing 
watchman,  and  to  be  carried  into  the  college  by  the  friend- 
ly Stonehewer,  who  now  appeared  on  the  scene.  To  our 
modern  ideas  this  outrage  on  a  harmless  middle-age  man 
of  honourable  position,  who  had  done  nothing  whatever 
to  provoke  insult  or  injury,  is  almost  inconceivable.  But 
there  was  a  deep  capacity  for  brutal  folly  underneath  the 
varnish  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  no  one  seems  to 
have  sympathized  with  Gray,  or  to  have  thought  the  con- 
duct of  the  youths  ungentlemanly.  As,  when  Dryden  was 
beaten  by  Rochester's  hired  and  masked  bravos,  it  was 


126  GRAY.  [chap. 

felt  that  Dry  den  was  thereby  disgraced,  so  Gray's  friends 
were  consistently  silent  on  this  story,  as  though  it  were  a 
shame  to  him,  and  we  owe  our  knowledge  of  the  particu- 
lars to  strangers,  more  especially  to  a  wild  creature  called 
Archibald  Campbell,  who  actually  ventured  to  tell  the  tale 
during  Gray's  lifetime. 

Gray  was  very  angry,  and  called  upon  the  authorities 
of  his  college  to  punish  the  offenders.  Mason  says :  "  Af- 
ter having  borne  the  insults  of  two  or  three  young  men 
of  fortune  longer  than  might  reasonably  have  been  ex- 
pected from  a  man  of  less  warmth  of  temper,  Mr.  Gray 
complained  to  the  governing  part  of  the  Society ;  and  not 
thinking  that  his  remonstrance  was  sufficiently  attended 
to,  quitted  the  college."  He  went  over  to  his  old  friends 
at  Pembroke,1  who  welcomed  him  with  one  accord  as  if 
he  had  been  "Mary  of  Valens  in  person."  Under  the 
foundation  of  this  sainted  lady  he  remained  for  the  rest 
of  his  life,  comfortably  lodged,  surrounded  by  congenial 
friends,  and  "  as  quiet  as  in  the  Grande  Chartreuse."  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  ever  been  appointed  to  a  fellowship 
at  Pembroke.  The  chambers  he  is  supposed  to  have  oc- 
cupied are  still  shown — a  large,  low  room,  at  the  western 
end  of  the  Hitcham  Building,  bright  and  pleasant,  with 
windows  looking  east  and  west.  He  adopted  habits  at 
Pembroke  which  he  had  never  indulged  in  at  Peterhouse. 
He  was  the  first,  and  for  a  long  while  the  only,  person  in 
the  University  who  made  his  rooms  look  pretty.  He  took 
care  that  his  windows  should  be  always  full  of  mignonette 
or  some  other  sweetly-scented  plant,  and  he  was  famous 
for  a  pair  of  huge  Japanese  vases,  in  blue  and  white  china. 
His  servant,  Stephen  Hempstead,  had  to  keep  the  room 

1  In  the  Admission  Book  at  Pembroke  there  is  this  entry:  "  Thomas 
Gray,  LL.B.,  admissus  est  ex  Collegio  Divi  Petro.   March  (sic)  6, 1756." 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  127 

as  bright  and  spick  as  an  old  lady's  bandbox,  and  not  an 
atom  of  dnst  was  allowed  to  rest  on  the  little  harpsichord 
where  the  poet  used  to  sit  in  the  twilight  and  play  toc- 
catas of  Scarlatti  or  Pergolesi.  Here  for  fifteen  quiet 
years,  the  autumn  of  his  life,  Gray  lived  amongst  his  books, 
his  china,  and  his  pictures,  and  here  at  last  we  shall  see 
him  die,  with  the  good  Master  of  Pembroke,  le  Petit  Bon 
Homme,  holding  his  band  in  the  last  services  of  friend- 
ship. Well  might  Gray  write  to  Wharton  (March  25, 
1756)  :  "Removing  myself  from  Peterhouse  to  Pembroke 
may  be  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  sera  in  a  life  so  barren 
of  events  as  mine." 

Curiously  enough,  the  shock  and  agitation  of  the  scene 
that  has  been  just  described  appear  to  have  had  no  ill 
effect  upon  Gray's  health.  His  letters  at  this  time  became, 
on  the  contrary,  much  more  buoyant  in  tone.  In  April, 
1756,  an  extraordinary  concert  of  spiritual  music,  in  which 
the  Stabat  Mater  of  Pergolesi  was  for  the  first  time  given 
in  England,  drew  him  up  to  London  for  three  days,  dur- 
ing which  time  he  lodged  with  Wharton.  All  the  ensu- 
ing summer  Mason,  now  and  henceforth  known  as  "  Scrod- 
dles"  in  Gray's  correspondence,  was  perpetrating  reams 
of  poetry,  or  prose  astonished  out  of  its  better  nature  at 
the  sudden  invasion  of  its  provinces  by  rhyme.  A  terri- 
ble tragedy  of  Caractacus,  suggested  by  the  yet  unfinished 
Bard,  with  much  blank-verse  invocation  of  "  Arvirap;us, 
my  bold,  my  breathless  boy,"  belongs  to  this  year  1756, 
and  can  now  be  read  only  by  a  very  patient  student  bent 
on  finding  how  nimble  Mason  could  be  in  borrowing  the 
mere  shell  and  outward  echo  of  Gray's  poetical  perform- 
ances.    The  famous 

"While  through  the  west,  where  sinks  the  crimson  day, 
Meek  twilight  slowly  sails,  and  waves  her  banners  gray," 


128  GRAY.  [chap. 

which  Gray  pronounced  "  superlative,"  and  which  the 
modern  reader  must  admit  to  be  pretty,  belong  also  to 
this  year,  and  are  to  be  found  in  an  ode  of  Mason's,  To 
a  Friend,  in  which  occurs  the  first  contemporary  celebra- 
tion of  a  greater  name  in  literature  than  his : 

"Through  this  still  valley  let  me  stray, 

Rapt  in  some  strain  of  pensive  Gray, 

Whose  lofty  genius  bears  along 

The  conscious  dignity  of  song ; 

And,  scorning  from  the  sacred  store 

To  waste  a  note  on  pride  or  power, 

Roves  through  the  glimmering  twilight  gloom, 

And  warbles  round  each  rustic  tomb  ; 

He,  too,  perchance  (for  well  I  know 

His  heart  can  melt  with  friendly  woe) — 
He,  too,  perchance,  when  these  poor  limbs  are  laid, 
Will  heave  one  tuneful  sigh,  and  soothe  my  hovering  shade." 

Gray  must  have  smiled  at  this  foolish  tribute,  but  he 
valued  the  affection  that  prompted  it,  and  he  deigned  in 
a  fatherly  way  to  beg  Wharton  to  let  him  hear  if  these 
odes  were  favourably  spoken  of  in  London. 

The  scene  of  Mason's  Caractacus  was  laid  in  Mona,  and 
Gray  was  at  this  time  engaged  in  the  spiritual  ascension 
of  Snowdon,  with  "  Odikle  "  at  his  side  :  "  I  hope  we  shall 
be  very  good  neighbours.  Any  Druidical  anecdotes  that 
I  can  meet  with  I  will  be  sure  to  send  you.  I  am  of 
opinion  that  the  ghosts" — for,  alas!  there  are  ghosts  in 
Caractacus  — "  will  spoil  the  picture,  unless  they  are 
thrown  at  a  huge  distance,  and  extremely  kept  down." 
In  June,  1756,  having  "no  more  pores  and  muscular  in- 
flations, and  troubled  only  with  depression  of  mind,"  Graj 
at  Stoke  rather  vaguely  proposed  to  Mason  at  Tunbridgs 
that  they  should  spend  the  summer  together  on  the  Con- 


VI.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  129 

tinent.  "  Shall  we  go  in  time,  and  have  a  house  together 
in  Switzerland?  It  is  a  fine  poetical  country  to  look  at, 
and  nohody  there  will  understand  a  word  we  say  or  write." 
Mason  was  probably  too  much  a  child  of  his  age  to  relish 
going  to  Switzerland ;  moreover,  there  was  a  chaplaincy  to 
Lord  John  Cavendish  towards  which  Mason  was  extending 
a  greedy  finger  and  thumb,  and  he  preferred  to  remain  in 
the  happy  hunting-grounds  of  endowment.  Gray  laughed 
with  indulgent  contempt  at  his  young  friend's  grasping 
wishes,  though  when  this  intense  desire  for  place  passed 
all  decent  limits  he  could  reprove  it  sharply  enough.  To 
the  sober  and  self-respecting  Gray,  who  had  never  asked 
for  anything  in  his  life,  to  intrigue  for  Church  preferment 
was  the  conduct  of  a  child  or  a  knave,  and  he  accordingly 
persisted  in  treating  Mason  as  a  child. 

Very  little  progress  was  made  with  The  Bard  in  1*756. 
In  December  of  that  year  "  Odikle  is  not  a  bit  grown, 
though  it  is  fine  mild  open  weather."  Suddenly,  in  May, 
1757,  it  was  brought  to  a  conclusion  in  consequence  of 
some  concerts  given  at  Cambridge  by  John  Parry,  the 
famous  blind  harper,  who  lived  until  1782,  and  whose  son 
was  one  of  the  first  A.R.A.'s.  Gray's  account  of  the  ex- 
traordinary effect  that  this  man's  music  made  on  him  is 
expressed  in  that  light  vein  with  which  he  loved  to  con- 
ceal deep  emotion :  "  There  is  no  faith  in  man,  no,  not 
in  a  Welshman ;  and  yet  Mr.  Parry  has  been  here,  and 
scratched  out  such  ravishing  blind  harmony,  such  tunes  of 
a  thousand  years  old,  with  names  enough  to  choke  you,  as 
have  set  all  this  learned  body  a-dancing,  and  inspired  them 
with  due  reverence  for  my  old  Bard  his  countryman, 
wherever  he  shall  appear.  Mr.  Parry,  you  must  know,  has 
put  my  ode  in  motion  again,  and  has  brought  it  at  last  to 
a  conclusion.     'Tis  to  him,  therefore,  that  you  owe  the 


130  GRAY.  [cHAfc 

treat  which  I  send  you  enclosed ;  namely,  the  breast  and 
merry-thought,  and  rump  too,  of  the  chicken  which  I  have 
been  chewing  so  long  that  I  would  give  it  to  the  world 
for  neck-beef  or  cow-heel." 

The  ode  so  rudely  spoken  of  is  no  less  than  that  Bard 
which  for  at  least  a  century  remained  almost  without  a 
rival  amongst  poems  cherished  by  strictly  poetical  persons 
for  the  qualities  of  sublimity  and  pomp  of  vision.  It  is 
only  in  the  very  latest  generation,  and  amongst  a  school 
of  extremely  refined  critics,  that  the  ascendency  of  this 
ode  has  been  questioned,  and  certain  pieces  by  Collins  and 
even  by  Blake  preferred  to  it.  There  is  a  great  and  even 
a  legitimate  pleasure  in  praising  that  which  plainly  pos- 
sesses very  high  merit,  and  which  has  too  long  been  over- 
looked or  neglected ;  but  we  must  beware  of  the  paradox 
which  denies  beauty  in  a  work  of  art,  because  beauty  has 
always  been  discovered  there.  Gray's  Bard  has  enjoyed 
an  instant  and  sustained  popularity,  whilst  Collins's  noble 
Ode  to  Liberty  has  had  few  admirers,  and  Blake's  Book  of 
Thel  till  lately  has  had  none ;  but  there  is  no  just  reason 
why  a  wish  to  assert  the  value  of  the  patriotic  fervour  of 
the  one  poem  and  the  rosy  effusion  of  the  other  should 
prevent  us  from  acknowledging  that,  great  as  are  the  qual- 
ities of  these  pieces,  the  human  sympathy,  historical  imag- 
ination, and  sustained  dithyrambic  dignity  of  The  Bard 
are  also  great,  and  probably  greater.  All  that  has  been 
said  of  the  evolution  of  the  Progress  of  Poesy  is  true  of 
that  of  The  Bard,  whilst  those  attributes  which  our  old 
critics  used  to  term  "  the  machinery  "  are  even  more  brill- 
iant and  appropriate  in  the  longer  poem  than  in  the  shorter. 
In  form  the  poems  are  sufficiently  analogous ;  each  has 
three  main  divisions,  with  strophe,  antistrophe,  and  epode, 
and  in  each  the  epode  is  dedicated  to  briskly  rhyming 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  131 

measures  and  experiments  in  metre.     The  opening  is  ad- 
mirably startling  and  effective ;  the  voice  that  meets  us 
with  its  denunciations  is  that  of  the  last  survivor  of  the 
ancient  race  of  Celtic  bards,  a  venerable  shape  who  is  seat- 
ed on  a  rock  above  the  defile  through  which  the  forces  of 
Edward  I.  are  about  to  march.     This  mysterious  being,  in 
Gray's  own  words,  "  with  a  voice  more  than  human,  re- 
proaches the  King  with  all  the  misery  and  desolation  which 
he  had  brought  on  his  country  ;  foretells  the  misfortunes 
of  the  Norman  race ;  and  with  prophetic  spirit  declares 
that  all  his  cruelty  shall  never  extinguish  the  noble  ardour 
of  poetic  genius  in  this  island,  and  that  men  shall  never 
be  wanting  to  celebrate  true  virtue  and  valour  in  immortal 
strains,  to  expose  vice  and  infamous  pleasure,  and  boldly 
censure  tyranny  and  oppression."      The  scheme  of  the 
poem,  therefore,  is  strictly  historical,  and  yet  is  not  very 
far  removed  from  that  of  Gray's  previous  written  and  un- 
written Pindaric  odes.     In  these  three  poems  the  dignity 
of  genius  and  its  function  as  a  ruler  and  benefactor  of 
mankind  are  made  the  chief  subject  of  discourse,  and  a 
mission  is  claimed  for  artists  in  verse  than  which  none 
was  ever  conceived  more  brilliant  or  more  august.     But, 
fortunately  for  his  readers,  Gray  was  diverted  from  his 
purely  abstract  consideration   of  history  into  a  concrete 
observation  of  its  most  picturesque  forms,  and  forgot  to 
trace  the  "noble  ardour  of  poetic  genius"  in  painting 
vivid  pictures  of  Edward  II.  enduring  his  torture  in  Berke- 
ley Castle,  and  of  the  massacre  of  the  Bards  at  the  battle 
of  Camlan.     Some  of  the  scenes  which  pass  across  the 
magic  mirror  of  the  old  man's  imagination  are  unrivalled 
for  concision  and  force.     That  in  which  the  court  of  Eliz- 
abeth, surrounded  by  her  lords  and  her  poets,  flashes  upon 
the  inner  eye,  is  of  an  inimitable  felicity  : 


132  GRAY.  [chap. 

"  Girt  with  many  a  baron  bold, 
Sublime  their  starry  fronts  they  rear ; 

And  gorgeous  dames,  and  statesmen  old 
In  bearded  majesty,  appear. 
In  the  midst  a  form  divine ! 
Her  eye  proclaims  her  of  the  Briton-line  ; 
Her  lion  port,  her  awe-commanding  face, 
Attempered  sweet  to  virgin  grace. 
What  strings  symphonious  tremble  in  the  air, 

What  strains  of  vocal  transport  round  her  play ! 
Hear  from  the  grave,  great  Taliessin,  hear ; 
They  breathe  a  soul  to  animate  thy  clay. 
Bright  Rapture  calls,  and,  soaring  as  she  sings, 
Waves  in  the  eye  of  Heaven  her  many-coloured  wings." 

This  closing  vision  of  a  pretty  but  incongruous  "  Rapt- 
ure "  may  remind  us  that  the  crowning  fault  of  Gray  and 
his  school,  their  assumption  that  a  mythology  might  be 
formed  out  of  the  emotions  of  the  human  mind,  and  a 
new  Olympus  be  fitted  out  with  brand-new  gods  of  a  mor- 
alist's making,  is  rarely  prominent  in  The  Bard  or  the  Eb 
egy  in  a  Country  Church -yard,  his  two  greatest  works. 
Some  use  of  allegorical  abstraction  is  necessary  to  the  very 
structure  of  poetry,  and  is  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  our 
most  realistic  writers.  It  is  in  its  excess  that  it  becomes 
ridiculous  or  tedious,  as  in  Mason  and  other  imitators  of 
Gray.  The  master  himself  was  not  by  any  means  able  at 
all  times  to  clothe  his  abstractions  with  flesh  and  blood, 
but  he  is  never  ridiculous.  He  felt,  indeed,  the  danger 
of  the  tendency  in  himself  and  others,  and  he  made  some 
remarks  on  the  subject  to  Mason  which  were  wholly  salu- 
tary : 

"I  had  rather  some  of  these  personages,  'Resignation,'  'Peace,' 
'  Revenge,' '  Slaughter,' '  Ambition,'  were  stripped  of  their  allegorical 
garb.     A  little  simplicity  here  and  there  in  the  expression  would 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  133 

better  prepare  the  high  and  fantastic  strain,  and  all  the  imaginable 
harpinga  that  follow.  .  .  .  The  true  lyric  style,  with  all  its  flights  of 
fancy,  ornaments,  and  heightening  of  expression,  and  harmony  of 
sound,  is  in  its  nature  superior  to  every  other  style ;  which  is  just 
the  cause  why  it  could  not  be  borne  in  a  work  of  great  length,  no 
more  than  the  eye  could  bear  to  see  all  this  scene  that  we  constantly 
gaze  upon — the  verdure  of  the  fields  and  woods,  the  azure  of  the  sea 
and  skies — turned  into  one  dazzling  expanse  of  gems.  The  epic, 
therefore,  assumed  a  style  of  graver  colours,  and  only  stuck  on  a 
diamond  (borrowed  from  her  sister)  here  and  there,  where  it  best  be- 
came her.  When  we  pass  from  the  diction  that  suits  this  kind  of 
writing  to  that  which  belongs  to  the  former,  it  appears  natural,  and 
delights  us ;  but  to  pass  on  a  sudden  from  the  lyric  glare  to  the  epic 
solemnity  (if  I  may  be  allowed  to  talk  nonsense)  has  a  very  differ- 
ent effect.  We  seem  to  drop  from  verse  into  mere  prose,  from  light 
into  darkness.  Do  you  not  think  if  Mingotti  stopped  in  the  middle 
of  her  best  air,  and  only  repeated  the  remaining  verses  (though  the 
best  Metastasio  ever  wrote),  that  they  would  not  appear  very  cold  to 
you,  and  very  heavy  ?" 

Between  Dryden  and  Wordsworth  there  was  no  man 
but  Gray  who  could  write  in  prose  about  his  art  with 
such  coherence  and  science  as  this.  These  careless  sen- 
tences outweigh  tomes  of  Blair's  glittering  rhetoric  and 
Hurd's  stilted  disquisitions  on  the  Beautiful  and  the  Ele- 
vated. 

Almost  directly  after  Gray  had  finished  The  Bard  he 
was  called  upon  to  write  an  epitaph  for  a  lady,  Mrs.  Jane 
Clarke,  who  had  died  in  childbirth  at  Epsom,  where  her 
husband  was  a  physician,  on  the  27th  of  April,  1757. 
Dr.  Clarke  had  been  an  early  college  friend  of  Gray's,  and 
he  applied  to  Gray  to  write  a  copy  of  verses  to  be  in- 
scribed on  a  tablet  in  Beckenham  church,  where  his  wife 
was  buried.  Gray  wrote  sixteen  lines,  not  in  his  happiest 
vein,  and  these  found  their  way  into  print  after  bis  death. 
In  his  tiny  nosegay  there  is,  perhaps,  no  flower  so  incon- 


134  GRAY.  [chap. 

siderable  as  this  perfunctory  Ejoitaph.  One  letter,  sev- 
eral years  later  than  the  date  of  this  poem,  proves  that 
Gray  continued  to  write  on  intimate  terms  to  Dr.  Clarke, 
who  does  not  seem  to  have  preserved  the  poet's  corre- 
spondence, and  is  not  otherwise  interesting  to  us.  In 
April  Gray  made  another  acquaintance,  of  a  very  differ- 
ent kind.  Lord  Nuneham,  a  young  man  of  fashion  and 
fortune,  with  a  rage  for  poetry,  came  rushing  down  upon 
him  with  a  letter  of  introduction  and  a  profusion  of  com- 
pliments. He  brought  a  large  bouquet  of  jonquils,  which 
he  presented  to  the  poet  with  a  reverence  so  profound 
that  Gray  could  not  fail  to  smell  the  jessamine-powder  in 
his  periwig,  and  indeed  he  was  too  fine  "even  for__me," 
says  the  poet,  "  who_love.  aJi-ttle  finery."  Lord  Nuneham 
came  expressly,  in  Newmarket  week,  to  protest  against 
going  to  Newmarket,  and  sat  devoutly  at  Gray's  feet,  half 
enthusiast,  for  three  whole  days,  talking  about  verses  and 
the  fine  arts.  Gray  was  quite  pleased  with  him  at  last; 
and  so  "  we  vowed  eternal  friendship,  embraced,  and 
parted."  Lord  John  Cavendish,  too,  was  in  Cambridge 
at  this  time,  and  also  pleased  Gray,  though  in  a  very  dif- 
ferent and  less  effusive  manner. 

In  the  summer  of  1757  Horace  Walpole  set  up  a  print- 
ing-press at  Strawberry  Hill,  and  persuaded  Gray  to  let 
his  Pindaric  Odes  be  the  first  issue  of  the  establishment. 
Accordingly  Gray  sent  him  a  MS.  copy  of  the  poems,  and 
they  were  set  up  with  wonderful  fuss  and  circumstance 
by  Walpole's  compositor;  Gray  being  more  than  usually 
often  at  Strawberry  Hill  this  summer.  Dodsley  agreed 
to  publish  the  book,  and  2000  copies  were  struck  off. 
On  the  29th  of  June  Gray  received  forty  guineas,  thej 
only  money  he  ever  gained  by  literature.  On  the  8th  of 
August  there  was  published  a  large,  thin  quarto,  entitled 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  1S5 

"  Odes    by    Mr.  Gray.      Owrayra    rrvveroicri.      Printed    at 
Strawberry  Hill   for  R.  and   J.  Dodsley,  in   Pall   Mall," 
with  an  engraving  of  Walpole's  little  gimcrack  dwelling 
on  the   title-page.     The   two    odes   have   no  other  titles 
than  Ode  I,  Ode  II. ;  they  form  a  pamphlet  of  twenty- 
one  pages,  and  were  sold  at  one  shilling.     Small  as  the 
volume  was,  however,  it  was  by  no  means   insignificant, 
and  it  achieved  a  very  great  success.     Garrick  aud  War- 
burton  led  the  chorus  of  praise;  the  famous  actor  pub- 
lishing some  verses  in   honour   of  the  odes,  the   famous 
critic  pronouncing  them  above  the  grasp  of  the  public ; 
and   this,  indeed,  was   true.     In   fact,  Gray   lamented,  as 
most  men  of  genius  have  had  to  lament,  that  the  praise 
he  received  was  not  always  judicious  praise,  and  therefore 
of  little  worth.     "  The  Zweroi"  he  says,  "  appear  to  be 
still  fewer  than  even  I  expected."     He  became,  however, 
a  kind  of  lion.     Goldsmith  wrote  an  examination  of  the 
Odes  for  the  Monthly  Review.     The  Cobhams,  at  Stoke, 
were    very  civil,  and  Mr.  and   Mrs.  Garrick   came   down 
there   to   stay  with  him ;   the  stiff,  prim    demeanour   of 
Dr.  Hurd  melted  into  smiles  and  compliments ;  the  Criti- 
cal Review  was  in  raptures,  though  it  mistook  the  vEolian 
Lyre  for  the  Harp  of  ^Eolus ;  and  at  York  races  sporting 
peers  were  heard  to  discuss  the  odes  in  a  spirit  of  bewil- 
dered eulogy.     Within  two  months  1300  copies  had  been 
sold.     Best  of  all,  Miss  Speed  seemed  to  understand,  and 
whispered  "  QuvavTa  ffi/j'troltn"  in  the  most  amiable  and 
sympathetic  tones.     But  Gray  could  enjoy  nothing;  sev- 
eral little  maladies  hung  over  him,  the  general  wreck  of 
his  frail  constitution  began  to  be  imminent.     Meanwhile 
small  things  worried  him.     The   great  Mr.  Fox  did  not 
wonder  Edward  I.  could  not  understand  what  the  Bard 
was  saying,  and  chuckled   at  his  own  wit;  young  Lord 
K     7  33 


136  GRAY.  [chap. 

Nuneham,  for  all  his  jonquils  and  bis  jessamine-powder, 
did  not  trouble  himself  to  acknowledge  his  presentation 
copy ;  people  said  Gray's  style  was  "  impenetrable  and 
inexplicable."  and  altogether  the  sweets  were  fewer  than 
the  bitters  in  the  cup  of  notoriety. 

Gray  had  placed  himself,  however,  at  one  leap  at  the 
head  of  the  living  English  poets.  Thomson  and  Blair  were 
now  dead,  Dyer  was  about  to  pass  away,  and  Collins,  hope- 
lessly insane,  was  making  the  cloisters  of  Chichester  re- 
sound with  his  terrible  shrieks.  Young,  now  very  aged, 
had  almost  abandoned  verse.  Johnson  had  retired  from 
all  competition  with  the  poets.  Smart,  whose  frivolous 
verses  had  been  collected  in  1754,  had  shown  himself,  in 
his  few  serious  efforts,  a  direct  disciple  and  imitator  of 
Gray's  early  style.  Goldsmith,  Churchill,  and  Cowper 
were  still  unheard  of ;  and  the  only  men  with  whom 
Gray  could  for  a  moment  be  supposed  to  contend  were 
Shenstone  and  Akenside.  Practically  both  of  these  men, 
also,  had  retired  from  poetry,  the  latter,  indeed,  having 
been  silent  for  twelve  years.  The  Odes  could  hardly  fail 
to  attract  attention  in  a  year  which  produced  no  other 
even  noticeable  publication  in  verse,  except  Dyer's  tire- 
some descriptive  poem  of  The  Fleece.  Gray  seems  to  have 
felt  that  his  genius,  his  "  verve,"  as  he  called  it,  was  trying 
to  breathe  in  a  vacuum ;  and  from  this  time  forward  he 
made  even  less  and  less  effort  to  concentrate  his  powers. 
In  the  winter  of  1757,  it  is  true,  he  began  to  plan  an  epic 
or  didactic  poem  on  the  Revival  of  Learning,  but  we  hear 
no  more  of  it.  His  few  remaining  poems  were  to  be 
lyrics,  pure  and  simple,  swallow-flights  of  song. 

On  the  12th  of  December,  1757,  Colley  Cibber  died, 
having  held  the  office  of  poet-laureate  for  twenty-seven 
years.      Lord  John  Cavendish   immediately  suggested  to 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  137 

his  brother,  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  who  was  then  Lord 
Chamberlain,  that,  as  Gray  was  the  greatest  living  poet, 
the  post  should  be  offered  to  him.  This  was  immediately 
done,  in  very  handsome  terms,  the  duke  even  offering  to 
waive  entirely  the  perfunctory  writing  of  odes,  which  had 
hitherto  been  deemed  an  annual  duty  of  all  poets-laureate. 
Gray  directed  Mason,  through  whom  the  offer  had  been 
made,  to  decline  it  very  civilly  : 

"  Though  I  well  know  the  bland,  emollient,  saponaceous  qualities 
both  of  sack  and  silver,  yet  if  any  great  man  would  say  to  me,  'I 
make,  you  rat-catcher  to  his  Majesty,  with  a  salary  of  300/.  a  year 
and  two  butts  of  the  best  Malaga ;  and  though  it  has  been  usual  to 
catch  a  mouse  or  two,  for  form's  sake,  in  public  once  a  year,  yet  to 
you,  sir,  we  shall  not  stand  upon  these  things,'  I  cannot  say  I  should 
jump  at  it :  nay,  if  they  would  drop  the  very  name  of  the  office,  and 
call  me  sinecure  to  the  King's  Majesty,  I  should  still  feel  a  little  awk- 
ward, and  think  everybody  I  saw  smelt  a  rat  about  me ;  but  I  do  not 
pretend  to  blame  any  one  else  that  has  not  the  same  sensations ;  for 
my  part,  I  would  rather  be  serjeant-trumpeter  or  pin-maker  to  the 
palace.  Nevertheless,  I  interest  myself  a  little  in  the  history  of  it, 
and  rather  wish  somebody  may  accept  it  that  will  retrieve  the  credit 
of  the  thing,  if  it  be  retrievable,  or  ever  had  any  credit.  Rowe  was, 
I  think,  the  last  man  of  character  that  had  it.  As  to  Settle,  whom 
you  mention,  he  belonged  to  my  Lord  Mayor,  not  to  the  King.  Eus- 
den  was  a  person  of  great  hopes  in  his  youth,  though  at  last  he  turn- 
ed out  a  drunken  parson.  Dryden  was  as  disgraceful  to  the  office, 
from  his  character,  as  the  poorest  scribbler  could  have  been  from  his 
verses.  The  office  itself  has  always  humbled  the  professor  hitherto 
(even  in  an  age  when  kings  were  somebody),  if  he  were  a  poor  writer, 
by  making  him  more  conspicuous,  and  if  he  were  a  good  one  by  set- 
ting him  at  war  with  the  little  fry  of  his  own  profession,  for  there 
are  poets  little  enough  to  envy  even  a  poet-laureate." 

The  duke  acted  promptly,  for  within  a  week  of  Cibber's 
death  the  laureateship  had  been  offered  to  Gray,  who  re- 
fused, and  to  "Whitehead,  who  accepted  it.     This  amiable 


138  GRAY.  [chap 

versifier  was,  perhaps,  more  worthy  of  the  compliment 
than  Mason,  who  wished  for  it,  and  who  raged  with  dis- 
appointment. 

In  January,  1758,  Gray  seems  to  have  recovered  suffi- 
ciently to  be  so  busy  buying  South  Sea  annuities,  and 
amassing  old  china  jars  and  three-legged  stools  with  grass- 
green  bottoms,  that  he  could  not  supply  Mason  with  that 
endless  flood  of  comment  on  Mason's  odes,  tragedies,  and 
epics  which  the  vivacious  poetaster  demanded.  Hurd,  in 
the  gentlemanly  manner  to  which  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  has 
dedicated  one  stringent  page,  was  calling  upon  Gray  to 
sympathise  with  him  about  the  wickedness  of  "  that 
wretch "  Akenside.  In  all  this  Gray  had  but  slight  in- 
terest. His  father's  fortune,  which  had  reached  10,000/. 
in  his  mother's  careful  hands,  had  been  much  damaged  by 
the  fire  in  Cornhill,  and  Gray  now  sank  a  large  portion  of 
his  property  in  an  annuity,  that  he  might  enjoy  a  larger 
income.  During  the  spring  of  1758  he  amused  himself 
by  writing  in  the  blank  leaves  of  Kitchen's  English  Atlas 
A  Catalogue  of  the  Antiquities,  Houses,  etc.,  in  England 
and  Wales.  This  was  considerable  enough  to  form  a  little 
volume,  and  in  1774,  after  Gray's  death,  Mason  printed  a 
few  copies  of  it  privately,  and  sent  them  round  to  Gray's 
friends;  and  in  1787  issued  a  second  edition  for  sale. 

In  April  of  the  same  year,  1758,  Dr.  Wharton  lost  his 
eldest  and,  at  that  time,  his  only  son.  Gray  not  only  wrote 
him  a  very  touching  letter  of  condolence,  but  some  verses 
on  the  death  of  the  child,  which  were  in  existence  thirty 
years  ago,  but  which  I  have  been  unable  to  trace.  In 
May  Gray  started  on  that  architectural  tour  in  the  Fens 
of  which  I  have  already  spoken,  and  in  June  was  sum- 
moned to  Stoke  by  the  illness  of  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Oliffe,  who 
had  a  sort  of  paralytic  stroke  whilst  walking  in  the  garden. 


vi.]  THE  PINDARIC  ODES.  13& 

She  recovered,  however,  and  Gray  returned  to  London, 
made  a  short  stay  at  Hampton  with  Lord  and  Lady  Cob- 
ham,  and  spent  July  at  Strawberry  Hill.  In  August  the 
Garricks  again  visited  him  at  Stoke,  but  he  had  hardly 
enough  physical  strength  to  endure  their  vivacity.  "  They 
are  now  gone,  and  I  am  not  sorry  for  it,  for  I  grow  so  old 
that,  I  own,  people  in  high  spirits  and  gaiety  overpower 
me,  and  entirely  take  away  mine.  I  can  yet  be  diverted 
by  their  sallies,  but  if  they  appear  to  take  notice  of  my 
dullness,  it  sinks  me  to  nothing.  ...  I  continue  better 
than  has  been  usual  with  me  in  the  summer,  though  I 
neither  walk  nor  take  anything :  'tis  in  mind  only  that  I 
am  weary  and  disagreeable."  His  position  at  Stoke,  with 
Mrs.  Oliffe  laid  up,  and  poor  bedridden  Mrs.  Rogers  grow- 
ing daily  weaker  and  weaker,  was  not  an  exhilarating  one. 
Towards  the  end  of  September  Mrs.  Rogers  recovered  her 
speech,  which  had  for  several  years  been  almost  unintel- 
ligible, flickered  up  for  two  or  three  days,  and  then  died. 
She  left  Mrs.  Oliffe  joint  executrix  of  her  small  property 
with  Gray,  who  describes  himself  in  November,  1758,  as 
"  agreeably  employed  in  dividing  nothing  with  an  old 
harridan,  who  is  the  spawn  of  Cerberus  and  the  dragon 
of  Wantley."  In  January,  1759,  Mrs.  Oliffe  having  taken 
herself  off  to  her  native  county  of  Norfolk,  Gray  closed 
the  house  at  Stoke-Pogis,  and  from  this  time  forth  only 
visited  that  village,  which  had  been  his  home  for  nearly 
twenty  years,  when  he  was  invited  to  stay  at  Stoke  House. 
At  the  same  time,  to  the  distress  of  Dr.  Brown,  he  ceased 
to  reside  at  Pembroke,  and  spent  the  next  three  years  in 
London. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

BRITISH     MUSEUM. NORTON     NICHOLS. 

When  the  Sloane  Collection  became  national  property 
at  the  death  of  its  founder  in  1753,  and  was  incorporated 
under  an  act  which  styled  it  the  British  Museum,  scholars 
and  antiquaries  expected  to  enter  at  once  upon  their  in- 
heritance. But  a  site  and  a  building  had  to  be  secured, 
and,  when  these  were  discovered,  it  took  a  long  while  to 
fit  up  the  commodious  galleries  of  Montagu  House.  On 
the  15th  of  January,  1759,  the  Museum  was  thrown  open 
to  the  public,  and  amongst  the  throng  of  visitors  was  Gray, 
who  had  settled  himself  and  his  household  gods  close  by, 
in  Southampton  Row,  and  who  for  some  weeks  had  been 
awaiting  the  official  Sesame.  He  had  been  seeing  some- 
thing of  London  society  meanwhile — entertained  by  Lady 
Carlisle,  invited  to  meet  Rousseau,  and  attending  concerts 
and  plays.  He  gives  some  account  of  the  performance 
of  Metastasio's  Ciro  Riconosciuto,  with  Cocchi's  agreeable 
music. 

The  British  Museum  he  found  "  indeed  a  treasure." 
It  was  at  first  so  crowded  that  "  the  corner  room  in  the 
basement,  furnished  with  a  wainscot  table  and  twenty 
chairs,"  was  totally  inadequate  to  supply  the  demand,  and 
in  order  to  be  comfortable  it  was  necessary  to  book  a  place 
a  fortnight  beforehand.     This  pressure,  however,  only  lasteu 


chap,  til]  BRITISH  MUSEUM.  141 

for  a  very  short  time  ;  curiosity  was  excited  by  the  novelty, 
but  quickly  languished,  and  this  little  room  was  found 
quite  ample  enough  to  contain  the  scholars  who  frequented 
it.  To  reach  it  the  intrepid  reader  had  to  pass  in  dark- 
ness, like  Jonah,  through  the  belly  of  a  whale,  from  which 
he  emerged  into  the  room  of  the  Keeper  of  Printed  Books, 
Dr.  Peter  Templeman,  a  physician,  who  had  received  this 
responsible  post  for  having  translated  Norderfs  Travels, 
and  who  resigned  it,  wearily,  in  17G1,  for  a  more  conge- 
nial appointment  at  the  Society  of  Arts.  By  July,  1759, 
the  rush  on  the  reading-room  had  entirely  subsided,  and 
on  the  23d  of  that  month  Gray  mentions  to  Mason  that 
there  are  only  five  readers  that  day.  These  were  Gray 
himself,  Dr.  Stukelcy  the  antiquary,  and  three  hack-writers 
who  were  copying  MSS.  for  hire. 

A  little  later  on  Gray  became  an  amused  witness  of 
those  factions  which  immediately  broke  out  amongst  the 
staff  of  the  British  Museum,  and  which  practically  lasted 
until  a  very  few  years  ago.  People  who  were  the  diverted 
or  regretful  witnesses  of  dissensions  between  a  late  Prin- 
cipal Librarian  and  the  scholars  whom  he  governed  may 
be  consoled  to  learn  that  things  were  just  as  bad  in  1759. 
Dr.  Gowin  Knight,  the  first  Principal  Librarian,  a  pom- 
pous martinet  with  no  pretence  to  scholarship,  made  life 
so  impossible  to  the  keepers  and  assistants  that  the  Mu- 
seum was  completely  broken  into  a  servile  and  a  rebellious 
faction.  Gray,  moving  noiselessly  to  and  fro,  noted  all 
this  and  smiled :  "  The  whole  society,  trustees  and  all,  are 
up  in  arms,  like  the  fellows  of  a  college."  Dr.  Knight 
made  no  concessions ;  the  keepers  presently  refused  to 
salute  him  when  they  passed  his  window,  and  Gray  and 
his  fellow-readers  were  at  last  obliged  to  make  a  detour 
every  day  because  Dr.  Knight  had  walled  up  a  passage 


142  GRAY.  [chap. 

in  order  to  annoy  the  keepers.  Meanwhile  the  trustees 
were  spending  5001.  a  year  more  than  their  income,  and 
Gray  confidently  predicts  that  before  long  all  the  books 
and  the  crocodiles  and  Jonah's  whale  will  be  put  up  to 
public  auction. 

At  Mr.  Jermyn's,  in  Southampton  Row,  Bloomsbury, 
Gray  was  very  comfortably  settled.  It  was  a  cleaner 
Bloomsbury  than  we  know  now,  and  a  brighter.  Gray 
from  his  bedroom  window  looked  out  on  a  south-west 
garden -wall  covered  with  flowering  jessamine  through 
June  and  July.  There  had  been  roses,  too,  in  this  Lon- 
don garden.  Gray  must  always  have  flowers  about  him, 
and  he  trudged  down  to  Covent  Garden  every  day  for  his 
sweet-peas  and  pinks,  scarlet  martagon-lilies,  double  stocks, 
and  flowering  marjoram.  His  drawing-room  looked  over 
Bedford  Gardens,  and  a  fine  stretch  of  upland  fields, 
crowned  at  last,  against  the  sky,  by  the  villages  of  High- 
gate  and  Hampstead.  St.  Giles's  was  at  his  back,  with 
many  a  dirty  court  and  alley,  but  in  front  of  him  against 
the  morning  light  there  was  little  but  sunshine  and  green- 
ery and  fresh  air.  He  seems  to  notice  nature  here  on  the 
outskirts  of  London  far  more  narrowly  than  at  Cambridge; 
there  are  little  parenthetical  notes,  asides  to  himself,  about 
"fair  white  flying  clouds  at  nine  in  the  morning"  of  a 
July  day,  or  wheelbarrows  heaped  up  with  small  black 
cherries  on  an  August  afternoon.  He  bought  twenty  wal- 
nuts for  a  penny  on  the  8th  of  September,  and  enjoyed  a 
fine  perdrigon-plum  upon  the  4th. 

Meanwhile  he  is  working  every  day  at  the  Museum,  feast- 
ing upon  literary  plums  and  walnuts,  searching  the  original 
Ledger-book  of  the  Signet,  copying  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt's 
Defence  and  his  poems,  discovering  "  several  odd  things 
unknown  to  our  historians,"  and  nursing  his  old  favourite 


vii.]  BRITISH  MUSEUM.  143 

project  of  a  IJislory  of  English  Poetry.  He  spent  as  a 
rule  four  hours  a  day  in  the  reading-room,  this  being  as 
much  as  his  very  delicate  health  could  bear,  for  repeated 
attacks  of  the  gout  had  made  even  this  amount  of  motion 
and  cramped  repose  sometimes  very  difficult. 

On  the  23d  of  September,  1759,  poor  Lady  Cobham, 
justly  believing  herself  to  be  dying,  summoned  Gray  down 
to  Stoke  House.  She  was  suffering  from  dropsy,  and  being 
in  a  very  depressed  condition  of  mind,  desired  him  not  to 
leave  her.  He  accordingly  remained  with  her  three  weeks, 
and  then  accompanied  her  and  Miss  Speed  to  town,  whith- 
er Lady  Cobham  was  recommended  to  come  for  advice. 
She  still  did  not  wish  to  part  from  him,  and  he  stayed 
until  late  in  November  in  her  house  in  Hanover  Square. 
He  has  some  picturesque  notes  of  the  beautiful  old  garden 
at  Stoke  that  autumn,  rich  with  carnations,  marigolds,  and 
asters,  and  with  great  clusters  of  white  grapes  on  warm 
south  walls.  After  watching  beside  Lady  Cobham  for 
some  weeks,  and  finding  no  reason  to  anticipate  a  sudden 
change  in  her  condition,  he  returned  to  his  own  lodging 
in  Southampton  Row,  and  plunged  again  into  MSS.  of 
Lydgate  and  noccleve. 

It  was  whilst  Gray  was  quietly  vegetating  in  Blooms- 
bury  that  an  event  occurred  of  which  he  was  quite  uncon- 
scious, which  yet  has  singularly  endeared  him  to  the  mem- 
ory of  Englishmen.  On  the  evening  of  the  12th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1759  —  whilst  Gray,  sauntering  back  from  the 
British  Museum  to  his  lodgings,  noted  that  the  weather 
was  cloudy,  with  a  south-south-west  wind — on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic  the  English  forces  lay  along  the  river 
Montmorency,  and  looked  anxiously  across  at  Quebec  and 
at  the  fateful  heights  of  Abraham.  When  night-fall  came, 
and  before  the  gallant  four  thousand  obeyed  the  word  of 


144  GRAY.  [chap. 

command  to  steal  across  the  river,  General  Wolfe,  the 
young  officer  of  thirty-three,  who  was  next  day  to  win 
death  and  immortality  in  victory,  crept  along  in  a  boat 
from  post  to  post  to  see  that  all  was  ready  for  the  expedi- 
tion. It  was  a  fine,  silent  evening,  and  as  they  pulled 
along,  with  muffled  oars,  the  General  recited  to  one  of  his 
officers  who  sat  with  him  in  the  stern  of  the  boat  nearly 
the  whole  of  Gray's  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church-yard,  add- 
ing, as  he  concluded,  "  I  would  prefer  being  the  author  of 
that  poem  to  the  glory  of  beating  the  French  to-morrow." 
Perhaps  no  finer  compliment  was  ever  paid  by  the  man 
of  action  to  the  man  of  imagination,  and,  sanctified,  as  it 
were,  by  the  dying  lips  of  the  great  English  hero,  the  poem 
seems  to  be  raised  far  above  its  intrinsic  rank  in  literature, 
and  to  demand  our  respect  as  one  of  the  acknowledged 
glories  of  our  race  and  language.  This  beautiful  anecdote 
of  Wolfe  rests  on  the  authority  of  Professor  Robison,  the 
mathematician,  who  was  a  recruit  in  the  Engineers  during 
the  attack  upon  Quebec,  and  happened  to  be  present  in  the 
boat  when  the  General  recited  Gray's  poem. 

Poor  Gray,  ever  pursued  by  the  terrors  of  arson,  had  a 
great  fright  in  the  last  days  of  November  in  this  year.  A 
fiie  broke  out  in  the  house  of  an  organist  on  the  opposite 
side  of  Southampton  Row,  and  the  poor  householder  was 
burnt  to  death ;  the  fire  spread  to  the  house  of  Gray's 
lawyer,  who  fortunately  saved  his  papers.  A  few  nights 
later  the  poet  was  roused  by  a  conflagration  close  at  hand 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  "  'Tis  strange,"  he  says,  in  a  spirit 
of  desperation,  "  that  we  all  of  us  here  in  town  lay  our- 
selves down  every  night  on  our  funereal  pile,  ready  made, 
and  compose  ourselves  to  rest,  whilst  every  drunken  foot- 
man and  drowsy  old  woman  has  a  candle  ready  to  light  it 
before  the  morning."     It  is  rather  difficult  to  know  what, 


vii.]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  145 

even  in  so  pastoral  a  Bloomsbury,  Gray  did  with  a  sow, 
for  which  he  thanks  Wharton  heartily  in  April,  1760. 

In  the  spring  of  this  year  Gray  first  met  Sterne,  who 
had  just  made  an  overwhelming  success  with  Tristram 
Shandy,  and  who  was  sitting  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 
Gray's  opinion  of  Sterne  was  not  entirely  unfavourable ; 
the  great  humorist  was  polite  to  him,  and  his  works  were 
not  by  nature  so  perplexing  to  Gray  as  those  of  Smollett 
and  Fielding.  The  poet  was  interested  in  Sterne's  newly 
discovered  emotion,  sensibility,  and  told  Nichols  after- 
wards that  in  this  sort  of  pathos  Sterne  never  failed ;  for 
his  wit  he  had  less  patience,  and  frankly  disapproved  his 
tittering  insinuations.  He  said  that  there  was  good  writ- 
ing and  good  sense  in  Sterne's  Sermons,  and  spoke  of  him 
when  he  died,  in  1768,  with  some  respect.  A  less  famous 
but  pleasanter  man,  whose  acquaintance  Gray  began  to  cul- 
tivate about  this  time,  was  Benjamin  Stillingfleet,  the  Blue- 
stocking. 

In  April,  1760,  Lady  Cobham  was  at  last  released  from 
her  sufferings.  She  left  the  whole  of  her  property,  30,000/., 
to  Harriet  Speed,  besides  the  house  in  Hanover  Square, 
plate,  jewels,  and  much  blue  and  white  china.  Gray  tells 
Wharton  darkly  that  Miss  Speed  does  not  know  her  own 
mind,  but  that  he  knows  his.  The  movements  of  this  odd 
couple  during  the  summer  of  1760  are  very  dim  to  us  and 
perplexing.  Why  they  seem  associated  in  some  sort  of 
distant  intimacy  from  April  to  June,  why  in  the  latter 
month  they  go  down  together  to  stay  with  General  Con- 
way and  Lady  Ailesbury  at  Park  Place,  near  Henley,  and 
why  Lady  Carlisle  is  of  the  party,  these  are  questions  that 
now  can  only  tantalize  us.  Gray  himself  confesses  that  all 
the  world  expected  him  to  marry  Miss  Speed,  and  was 
astonished   that   Lady  Cobham   only  left  him  '20/.  for  a 


146  GRAY.  [chap. 

mourning-ring.  It  seems  likely  on  the  whole  that,  had  he 
been  inclined  to  endow  Harriet  Speed  with  his  gout,  his 
poverty,  his  melancholy,  and  his  fitful  genius,  she  would 
have  accepted  the  responsibility.  When  she  did  marry  it 
was  not  for  money  or  position.  He  probably,  for  his  part, 
did  not  feel  so  passionately  inclined  to  her  as  to  convince 
himself  that  he  ought  to  think  of  marriage.  He  put  an 
air  of  Geminiani  to  words  for  her,  not  very  successfully, 
and  he  wrote  one  solitary  strain  of  amatory  experience : 

"  With  beauty,  with  pleasure  surrounded,  to  languish, 
To  weep  without  knowing  the  cause  of  my  anguish  ; 
To  start  from  short  slumbers,  and  wish  for  the  morning— 
To  close  my  dull  eyes  when  I  see  it  returning ; 
Sighs  sudden  and  frequent,  looks  ever  dejected — 
Words  that  steal  from  my  tongue,  by  no  meaning  connected ! 
Ah  !  say,  fellow-swains,  how  these  symptoms  befell  me  ? 
They  smile,  but  reply  not — sure  Delia  will  tell  me !" 

For  a  month  in  the  summer  of  1760  he  lived  at  Park 
Place,  in  the  company  of  Miss  Speed,  Lady  Ailesbury,  and 
Lady  Carlisle,  who  laughed  from  morning  to  night,  and 
would  not  allow  him  to  give  way  to  what  they  called  his 
"  sulkiness."  They  found  him  a  difficult  guest  to  enter- 
tain. Lady  Ailesbury  told  Walpole  afterwards  that  one 
day,  when  they  went  out  for  a  picnic,  Gray  only  opened 
his  lips  once,  and  then  merely  to  say,  "  Yes,  my  lady,  I 
believe  so."  His  own  account  shows  that  his  nerves  were 
in  a  very  weary  condition.  "  Company  and  cards  at  home, 
parties  by  land  and  water  abroad,  and  what  they  call  doing 
something,  that  is,  racketing  about  from  morning  to  night, 
are  occupations,  I  find,  that  wear  out  my  spirits,  especially 
in  a  situation  where  one  might  sit  still,  and  be  alone  with 
pleasure."  Early  in  August  he  escaped  to  the  quiotncss 
of  Cambridge  in  the  Long  Vacation,  and  after  this  saw  lit- 


til]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  147 

tie  of  Miss  Speed.  Next  January  she  married  a  poor  man 
ten  years  younger  than  herself,  a  Baron  de  la  Peyriere, 
and  went  to  live  at  Viry,  on  the  Lake  of  Geneva.  Here, 
long  after  the  death  of  the  poet,  she  received  a  Mr.  Le- 
man,  and  gave  into  his  hands  the  lines  which  Gray  had 
addressed  to  her.  So  ended  his  one  feeble  and  shadowy 
romance.  Gray  was  not  destined  to  come  within  the 
genial  glow  of  any  woman's  devotion,  except  his  mother's. 
He  lived  a  life  apart  from  the  absorbing  emotions  of  hu- 
manity, desirous  to  sympathise  with,  but  not  to  partake 
in,  the  stationary  affections  and  household  pleasures  of  the 
race.  In  the  annals  of  friendship  he  is  eminent;  he  did 
not  choose  to  tempt  fortune  by  becoming  a  husband  and  a 
father.  There  are  some  beautiful  words  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  that  come  before  the  mind  as  singularly  appro- 
priate to  Gray  :  "  I  never  yet  cast  a  true  affection  on  a 
woman ;  but  I  have  loved  my  friend,  as  I  do  virtue,  my 
soul,  my  God." 

In  July,  1760,  there  were  published  anonymously  Two 
Odes,  addressed  to  Obscurity  and  to  Oblivion,  which  were 
attacks  on  Gray  and  on  Mason  respectively.  It  was  not 
at  first  recognised  that  this  was  a  salute  fired  off  by  that 
group  of  young  satirists  from  Westminster,  of  whom 
Cowper,  Lloyd,  and  Churchill  are  now  the  best  known. 
These  odes,  indeed,  were  probably  a  joint  production,  but 
the  credit  of  them  was  taken  by  George  Colman  (the 
elder)  and  by  Robert  Lloyd,  gay  young  wits  of  twenty- 
seven.  The  mock  odes,  in  which  the  manners  of  Gray 
and  Mason  were  fairly  well  parodied,  attracted  a  good  deal 
more  notice  than  they  were  worth,  and  the  Monthly  Re- 
view challenged  the  poets  to  reply.  But  Gray  warned 
Mason  not  to  do  so.  Colman  was  a  friend  of  Garrick, 
whilst  Lloyd  was  an  impassioned  admirer  of  Gray  himself, 


148  GRAY.  [chap. 

and  there  was  no  venom  in  the  verses.  Lloyd,  indeed,  had 
the  naivete  to  reprint  these  odes  some  years  afterwards  in 
a  volume  which  bore  his  name,  and  which  contained  a 
Latin  version  of  the  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church- yard. 
Lloyd  was  a  figure  of  no  importance,  a  mere  shadow  cast 
before  by  Churchill. 

In  1760  Gray  became  deeply  interested  in  the  Erse 
Fragments  of  Macpherson,  soon  to  come  before  the  world 
as  the  epic  of  Ossian.  He  corresponded  with  the  young 
Scotchman  of  twenty-two,  whom  he  found  stupid  and  ill- 
educated,  and,  in  Gray's  opinion,  quite  incapable  of  having 
invented  what  he  was  at  this  time  producing.  The  elabo- 
rate pieces,  the  narratives  of  Croma,  Finyal,  and  the  rest, 
were  not  at  this  time  thought  of,  and  it  seems,  on  the  whole, 
that  the  romantic  fragments  so  much  admired  by  the 
best  judges  of  poetry  were  genuine.  What  is  interesting 
to  us  in  Gray's  connexion  with  Ossian  is  partly  critical  and 
partly  personal.  Critically  it  is  very  important  to  see  that 
the  romantic  tendency  of  his  mind  asserted  itself  at  once 
in  the  presence  of  this  savage  poetry.  He  quotes  certain 
phrases  with  high  approbation.  Ossian  says  of  the  winds, 
"  Their  songs  are  of  other  worlds :"  Gray  exclaims,  "  Did 
you  never  observe  that  pause,  as  the  gust  is  recollecting  it- 
self, and  rising  upon  the  ear  in  a  shrill  and  plaintive  note 
like  the  swell  of  an  ^Eolian  harp  ?  I  do  assure  you  there 
is  nothing  in  the  world  so  like  the  voice  of  a  spirit." 
These  pieces  produced  on  him  just  the  same  effect  of  ex- 
citing and  stimulating  mystery  that  had  been  caused  by 
his  meeting  with  the  ballads  of  Gil  Morice  and  Chevy 
Chase  in  1757.  He  began  to  feel,  just  as  the  power  of 
writing  verse  was  leaving  him  or  seemed  to  be  declining, 
that  the  deepest  chords  of  his  nature  as  a  poet  had  never 
yet  been  struck.     From  this  time  forth  what  little  serious 


vii.  J  NORTON  NICHOLS.  141 

poetry  he  wrote  was  distinctly  romantic,  and  his  studies 
were  all  in  the  direction  of  what  was  savage  and  archaic, 
the  poetry  of  the  precursors  of  our  literature  in  England 
and  Scotland,  the  Runic  chants  of  the  Scandinavians,  the 
war-songs  of  the  primitive  Gaels  —  everything,  in  fact, 
which  for  a  century  past  had  heen  looked  upon  as  ungen- 
tcel  and  incorrect  in  literature.  Personally  what  is  inter- 
esting in  his  introduction  to  Ossian  is  his  sudden  sympathy 
with  men  like  Adam  Smith  and  David  Hume,  for  whom 
he  had  been  trained  in  the  school  of  Warburton  and  Hurd 
to  cultivate  a  fanatic  hatred.  In  the  summer  of  1760  a 
variety  of  civilities  on  the  absorbing  question  of  the  Erse 
Fragments  passed  between  him  and  the  great  historian. 
Hume  had  written  to  a  friend :  "  It  gives  me  pleasure  to 
find  that  a  person  of  so  fine  a  taste  as  Mr.  Gray  approves 
of  these  fragments,  as  it  may  convince  us  that  our  fond- 
ness of  them  is  not  altogether  founded  on  national  prepos- 
session ;"  and  Gray  was  encouraged  by  this  to  enter  into 
correspondence  of  a  most  friendly  kind  with  the  dangerous 
enemy  of  orthodoxy.  He  never  quite  satisfied  himself 
about  Ossian ;  his  last  word  on  that  subject  is :  "  For  me, 
I  admire  nothing  but  Finc/al,  yet  I  remain  still  in  doubt 
about  the  authenticity  of  these  poems,  though  inclining 
rather  to  believe  them  genuine  in  spite  of  the  world. 
Whether  they  are  the  inventions  of  antiquity  or  of  a  mod- 
ern Scotchman,  either  case  to  me  is  alike  unaccountable. 
Je  rrCy  ^ere?s."  Modern  scholarship  has  really  not  pro- 
gressed much  nearer  to  a  solution  of  the  puzzle. 

Partly  at  the  instance  of  Mason,  Gray  took  a  considera- 
ble interest  in  the  exhibition  of  the  Society  of  Arts  at  the 
Adelphi,  in  1700.  This  was  the  first  collection  of  the 
kind  made  in  London,  and  was  the  nucleus  out  of  which 
tne  institution  of  the  Royal  Academy  sprang.     The  gen- 


150  GRAY.  [chap. 

ius  of  this  first  exhibition  was  Paul  Sandby,  a  man  whom 
Mason  thought  he  had  discovered,  and  whom  he  was  con- 
stantly recommending  to  Gray.  Sandby,  afterwards  emi- 
nent as  the  first  great  English  water-colour  painter,  had  at 
this  time  hardly  discovered  his  vocation,  though  he  was  in 
his  thirty-fifth  year.  He  was  still  designing  architecture 
and  making  profitless  gibes  and  lampoons  against  Hogarth. 
Gray  and  Mason  appear  to  have  drawn  his  attention  to 
landscape  of  a  romantic  order,  and  in  October,  1760,  Gray 
tells  Wharton  of  a  great  picture  in  oils,  illustrating  The 
Bard,  with  Edward  I.  in  the  foreground  and  Snowdon  be- 
hind, which  Sandby  and  Mason  have  concocted  together, 
and  which  is  to  be  the  former's  exhibition  picture  for  1761. 
Sandby  either  repeated  this  subject  or  took  another  from 
the  same  poem,  for  there  exists  a  picture  of  his,  without 
any  Edward  I.,  in  which  the  Bard  is  represented  as  plung- 
ing into  the  roaring  tide,  with  his  lyre  in  his  hand,  and 
Snowdon  behind  him. 

During  the  winter  of  1760  and  the  spring  of  1761  Gray 
seems  to  have  given  his  main  attention  to  early  English 
poetry.  He  worked  at  the  British  Museum  with  indefati- 
gable zeal,  copying  with  his  own  hand  the  whole  of  the 
very  rare  1579  edition  of  Gawin  Douglas's  Palace  of  Hon- 
our, which  he  greatly  admired,  and  composing  those  inter- 
esting  and  learned  studies  on  Metre  and  on  the  Poetry  of 
John  Lydgate  which  Mathias  first  printed  in  1814. 

Warburton  had  placed  in  his  hands  a  rough  sketch 
which  Pope  had  drawn  out  of  a  classification  of  the  Brit- 
ish Poets.  Pope's  knowledge  did  not  go  very  far,  and 
Gray  seems  to  have  first  formed  the  notion  of  himself 
writing  a  History  of  English  Poetry  whilst  correcting  his 
predecessor's  errors.  The  scheme  of  his  history  is  one 
which  will  probably  be  followed  by  the  historian  of  our 


vii.]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  151 

poetry,  when  such  a  man  arises ;  Gray  proposed  to  open 
by  a  full  examination  of  the  Provencal  school,  in  which 
he  saw  the  germ  of  all  the  modern  poetry  of  Western  Eu- 
rope; from  Provence  to  France  and  Italy,  and  thence  to 
England  the  transition  was  to  be  easy ;  and  it  was  only 
after  bringing  up  the  reader  to  the  mature  style  of  Gower 
and  Chaucer  that  a  return  was  to  be  made  to  the  native, 
that  is,  the  Anglo-Saxon  elements  of  our  literature.  Gray 
made  a  variety  of  purchases  for  use  in  this  projected  com- 
pilation, and  according  to  his  MS.  account-book  he  had 
some  "finds"  which  are  enough  to  make  the  modern  bib- 
liomaniac mad  with  envy.  He  gave  sixpence  each  for 
the  1587  edition  of  Golding's  Ovid  and  the  1607  edition 
of  Phaer's  jEneid,  whilst  the  1550  edition  of  John  Hey- 
wood's  Fables  seems  to  have  been  thrown  in  for  nothing, 
to  make  up  the  parcel.  Needless  to  say  that,  after  con- 
suming months  and  years  in  preparing  materials  for  his 
great  work,  Gray  never  completed  or  even  began  it,  and  in 
April,  1770,  learning  from  Hurd  that  Thomas  Warton  was 
about  to  essay  the  same  labour,  he  placed  all  his  notes  and 
memoranda  in  Warton's  hands.  The  result,  which  Gray 
never  lived  to  see,  was  creditable  and  valuable,  and  even 
now  is  not  entirely  antiquated ;  it  was  very  different,  how- 
ever, from  what  the  world  would  have  had  every  right  to 
expect  from  Gray's  learning,  taste,  and  method. 

Two  short  poems  composed  in  the  course  of  1761  next 
demand  our  attention.  The  first  is  a  sketch  of  Gray's  own 
character,  which  was  found  in  one  of  his  note-books: 

"  Too  poor  for  a  bribe,  and  too  proud  to  importune, 
He  had  not  the  method  of  making  a  fortune  ; 
Could  love,  and  could  hate,  so  was  thought  somewhat  odd; 
No  very  great  wit,  he  believed  in  a  God  ; 
A  post  or  a  pension  he  did  not  desire, 

But  left  Church  and  State  to  Charles  Townshend  and  Squire." 
L  34 


152  GRAY.  [chap. 

It  has  been  commonly  supposed  that  these  lines  suggest- 
ed to  Goldsmith  his  character  of  Burke  in  Retaliation. 
Charles  Townshend  is  the  famous  statesman,  surnamed 
the  Weathercock;  the  Rev.  Samuel  Squire  was  much  more 
obscure,  an  intriguing;  Fellow  of  a  Cambridge  college  who 
had  just  contrived  to  wriggle  into  the  bishopric  of  St.  Da- 
vid's. Warburton  said  that  Squire  "  made  religion  his 
trade."  At  the  storming  of  Belleisle,  June  13, 1761,  Sir 
William  Williams,  a  young  soldier  with  whom  Gray  was 
slightly  acquainted,  was  killed,  and  the  Montagus,  who 
proposed  to  erect  a  monument  to  him,  applied  to  Gray 
for  an  epitaph.  After  considerable  difficulty,  in  August 
of  that  year,  Gray  contrived  to  squeeze  out  three  of  his 
stately  quatrains.  Walpole  describes  Williams  as  "  a  gal- 
lant and  ambitious  young  man,  who  had  devoted  himself 
to  war  and  politics,"  and  to  whom  Frederic  Montagu  was 
warmly  attached.  Gray,  however,  expresses  no  strong  per- 
sonal feeling,  and  did  not,  indeed,  know  much  of  the  sub- 
ject of  his  elegy.  It  is  curious  that  in  a  letter  to  Dr. 
Brown,  dated  October  23,  1760,  Gray  mentions  that  Sir 
W.  Williams  is  starting  on  the  expedition  that  proved  fa- 
tal to  him,  and  predicts  that  he  "  may  lay  his  fine  Van- 
dyck  head  in  the  dust." 

For  two  years  Gray  had  kept  his  rooms  at  Cambridge 
locked  up,  except  during  the  Long  Vacation,  but  in  the 
early  spring  of  1761  he  began  to  think  of  returning  to 
what  was  really  home  for  him.  He  ran  down  for  a  few 
days  in  January,  but  found  Cambridge  too  cold,  and  told 
Dr.  Brown  not  to  expect  him  till  the  codlin  hedge  at 
Pembroke  was  out  in  blossom.  Business,  however,  de- 
layed him,  against  his  will,  until  June,  when  he  settled  in 
college.  In  September  he  came  up  again  to  London  to  be 
oresent  at  the  coronation  of  George  IIL,  on  which  occa- 


vii.]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  163 

sion  he  was  accommodated  with  a  place  in  the  Lord  Cham- 
berlain's box.  "The  Bishop  of  Rochester  would  have 
dropped  the  crown  if  it  had  not  been  pinned  to  the  cush- 
ion, and  the  King  was  often  obliged  to  call  out,  and  set 
matters  right;  but  the  sword  of  state  had  been  entirely 
forgot,  so  Lord  Huntingdon  was  forced  to  carry  the  Lord 
Mayor's  great  two-handed  sword  instead  of  it.  This  made 
it  later  than  ordinary  before  they  got  under  their  canopies 
and  set  forward.  I  should  have  told  you  that  the  old 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  with  his  stick,  went  doddling  by  the 
side  of  the  Queen,  and  the  Bishop  of  Chester  had  the 
pleasure  of  bearing  the  gold  paten.  When  they  were 
gone  we  went  down  to  dinner,  for  there  were  three  rooms 
below,  where  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  was  so  good  as  to 
feed  us  with  great  cold  sirloins  of  beef,  legs  of  mutton,  fil- 
lets of  veal,  and  other  substantial  viands  and  liquors,  which 
we  devoured  all  higgledy-piggledy,  like  porters ;  after  which 
every  one  scrambled  up  again,  and  seated  themselves." 

In  the  winter  of  1761  Gray  was  curiously  excited  by 
the  arrival  at  Cambridge  of  Mr.  Delaval,  a  former  Fellow 
of  the  college,  bringing  with  him  a  set  of  musical  glasses. 
To  Mason  Gray  writes,  on  the  8th  of  December : 

"  Of  all  loves  come  to  Cambridge  out  of  hand,  for  here  is  Mr.  Del- 
aval  and  a  charming  set  of  glasses  that  sing  like  nightingales ;  and 
we  have  concerts  every  other  night,  and  shall  stay  here  this  month 
or  two;  and  a  vast  deal  of  good  company,  and  a  whale  in  pickle  just 
come  from  Ipswich  ;  and  the  man  will  not  die,  and  Mr.  Wood  is  gone 
to  Chatsworth  •,  and  there  is  nobody  but  you  and  Tom  and  the  curled 
dog ;  and  do  not  talk  of  the  charge,  for  we  will  make  a  subscription ; 
besides,  we  know  you  always  come  when  you  have  a  mind." 

As  early  as  1760,  probably  during  one  of  his  flying  visits 
to  Cambridge,  Gray  had  a  young  fellow  introduced  to  him 
of  whom  he  seems  at  that  time  to  have  taken  no  notice, 


1 54  GRAY.  [chap. 

but  who  was  to  become  the  most  intimate  and  valued  of 
bis  friends.  No  person  lias  left  so  clear  and  circumstan- 
tial an  account  of  the  appearance,  conduct,  and  sayings 
of  Gray  as  the  Rev.  Norton  Nichols,  of  Blandeston,  in 
1*760  an  undergraduate  at  Trinity  Hall,  and  between  eigh- 
teen and  nineteen  years  of  age.  Nichols  afterwards  told 
Mathias  that  the  lightning  brightness  of  Gray's  eye  was 
what  struck  him  most  in  his  first  impression,  and  he  used 
the  phrase  "folgorante  sguardo"  to  express  what  he 
meant.  A  little  later  than  this,  at  a  social  gathering  in 
the  rooms  of  a  Mr.  Lobbs,  at  Peterhouse,  Nichols  formed 
one  of  a  party  who  collected  round  Gray's  chair  and 
listened  to  his  bright  conversation.  The  young  man  was 
too  modest  to  join  in  the  talk,  until,  in  reply  to  something 
that  had  been  said  on  the  use  of  bold  metaphors  in  poetr}% 
Gray  quoted  Milton's  "  The  sun  to  me  is  dark,  and  silent 
as  the  moon  ;"  upon  this  Nichols  ventured  to  ask  whether 
this  might  not  possibly  be  imitated  from  Dante,  "  Mi  ri- 
pingeva  la  dove  il  sol  tace."  Gray  turned  quickly  round 
and  said,  "Sir,  do  you  read  Dante?"  and  immediately 
entered  into  conversation  with  him.  He  found  Nichols 
an  intelligent  and  sympathetic  student  of  literature;  he 
chiefly  addressed  him  through  the  remainder  of  the  even- 
ing ;  and  when  they  came  to  part  he  pressed  him  to  visit 
him  in  his  own  rooms  at  Pembroke. 

Gray  had  never  forgotten  the  Italian  which  he  had 
learned  in  his  youth,  and  he  was  deeply  read  in  Dante, 
Petrarch,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso,  whilst  disdaining  those  pop- 
ular poets  of  the  eighteenth  century  who  at  that  time 
enjoyed  more  consideration  in  their  native  land  than  the 
great  classics  of  the  country.  One  of  his  proofs  of  favour 
to  his  young  friend  Nichols  was  to  lend  him  his  marked 
and  annotated  copy  of   Petrarch ;   and  he   was   pleased 


vii.]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  155 

when  Nichols  was  the  first  to  trace  in  the  Purgatorio  the 
lines  which  suggested  a  phrase  in  the  Elegy  in  a  Country 
Church-yard.  It  was  doubtless  with  a  side-glance  at  his 
own  starved  condition  of  genius  that  he  told  Nichols 
that  he  thought  it  "  an  advantage  to  Dante  to  have  been 
produced  in  a  rude  age  of  strong  and  uncontrolled  pas- 
sions, when  the  Muse  was  not  checked  by  refinement  and 
the  fear  of  criticism."  For  the  next  three  years  we  must 
consider  Gray  as  constantly  cheered  by  the  sympathy  and 
enthusiasm  of  young  Nichols,  though  it  is  not  until  1VG4 
that  we  come  upon  the  first  of  the  invaluable  letters 
which  the  latter  received  from  his  great  friend. 

Nothing  could  be  more  humdrum  than  Gray's  existence 
about  this  time.  There  is  no  sign  of  literary  life  in  him, 
and  the  whole  year  1762  seems  only  broken  by  a  journey 
northwards  in  the  summer.  Towards  the  end  of  June  he 
went  to  stay  at  York  for  a  fortnight  with  Mason,  whose 
"  insatiable  avarice,"  as  Gray  calls  it  in  writing  to  him, 
had  been  lulled  for  a  little  while  by  the  office  of  Residen- 
tiary of  York  Cathedral.  Mason  was  now  grown  lazy  and 
gross,  sitting,  "  like  a  Japanese  divinity,  with  his  hands 
folded  on  his  fat  belly,"  and  so  prosperous  that  Gray 
recommends  him  to  "  shut  his  insatiable  repining  mouth." 
There  was  a  fund  of  good-humour  about  Mason,  and  under 
all  the  satire  of  his  friend  he  does  not  seem  to  have  shown 
the  least  irritation.  From  York  Gray  went  on  to  Durham, 
to  stay  with  Wharton  at  Old  Park,  where  he  was  extremely 
happy :  "  We  take  in  no  newspaper  or  magazine,  but  the 
cream  and  butter  are  beyond  compare."  He  made  a  long 
stay,  and  rather  late  in  the  autumn  set  out  for  a  tour  in 
Yorkshire  by  himself.  Through  driving  rain  he  saw  what 
he  could  of  Richmond  and  of  Ripon,  but  was  fortunate 
enough  to  secure  some  gleams  of  sunshine  for  an  exami- 


156  GRAY.  [chap. 

nation  of  Fountains  Abbey.  At  Sheffield,  then  pastoral 
and  pretty  still,  he  admired  the  charming  situation  of  the 
town,  and  so  came  at  last  to  Chatsworth  and  Hardwicke, 
at  which  latter  place  "  one  would  think  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots  was  but  just  walked  down  into  the  park  with  her 
guard  for  half  an  hour."  After  passing  through  Chester- 
field and  Mansfield,  Gray  descended  the  Trent,  spent  two 
or  three  days  at  Nottingham,  and  came  up  to  London 
by  the  coach. 

He  arrived  to  find  letters  awaiting  him,  and  a  great 
pother.  Dr.  Shallet  Turner,  of  Peterhouse,  Professor  of 
Modern  History  and  Modern  Languages  at  Cambridge,  had 
been  dead  a  fortnight,  and  Gray's  friends  were  very  anxious 
to  secure  the  vacant  post  for  him.  The  chair  had  been 
founded  by  George  Lin  1 724,  and  the  stipend  was  4007. 
It  was  not  expected  that  any  lectures  should  be  given ; 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  not  one  lecture  was  delivered  until 
after  Gray's  death.  Shallet  Turner  had  succeeded  Samuel 
Harris,  the  first  professor,  in  1735,  and  had  held  the  sine- 
cure for  twenty-seven  years.  Gray's  friends  encouraged 
him  to  think  that  Lord  Bute  would  look  favourably  on  his 
claims,  partly  because  of  his  fame  as  a  poet,  and  partly 
because  Bute's  creature,  Sir  Henry  Erskine,  was  a  great 
friend  of  Gray's ;  but  Sir  Francis  Blake  Delaval  had  in 
the  mean  time  secured  the  interest  of  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle for  his  own  kinsman.  Early  in  November  it  was 
generally  reported  that  Delaval  had  been  appointed,  but 
a  month  later  the  post  was  actually  given  to  Lawrence 
Brockett,  of  Trinity,  who  held  it  until  1768,  when  he  was 
succeeded  by  Gray.  This  is  the  only  occasion  upon  which 
the  poet,  in  an  age  when  the  most  greedy  and  open  de- 
mands for  promotion  were  considered  in  no  way  dishon- 
ourable, persuaded  his  haughty  and  independent  spirit  to 


vii.)  NORTON  NICHOLS.  167 

ask  for  anything ;  in  tins  one  case  he  gave  way  to  the 
importunities  of  a  crowd  of  friends,  who  declared  that  he 
had  but  to  put  out  his  hand  and  take  the  fruit  that  was 
ready  to  drop  into  it. 

In  the  spring  of  1763  Gray  was  recalled  to  the  pursuit 
of  literature  by  the  chance  that  a  friend  of  his,  a  Mr. 
Howe,  of  Pembroke,  whilst  travelling  in  Italy,  met  the 
celebrated  critic  and  commentator  Count  Francesco  Alga- 
rotti,  to  whom  he  presented  Gray's  poems.  The  Count 
read  them  with  rapturous  admiration,  and  passed  them  on 
to  the  young  poet  Agostino  Paradisi,  with  a  recommen- 
dation that  he  should  translate  them  into  Italian.  The 
reputation  of  Algarotti  was  then  a  European  one,  and  Gray 
was  very  much  flattered  at  the  graceful  and  ardent  com- 
pliments of  so  famous  a  connoisseur.  "  I  was  not  born  so 
far  from  the  sun,"  he  says,  in  a  letter  dated  February  17, 
1763,  "as  to  be  ignorant  of  Count  Algarotti's  name  and 
reputation ;  nor  am  I  so  far  advanced  in  years,  or  in  phi- 
losophy, as  not  to  feel  the  warmth  of  his  approbation.  The 
odes  in  question,  as  their  motto  shows,  were  meant  to  be 
vocal  to  the  intelligent  alone.  How  few  they  were  in  my 
own  country  Mr.  Howe  can  testify ;  and  yet  my  ambition 
was  terminated  by  that  small  circle.  I  have  good  reason 
to  be  proud,  if  my  voice  has  reached  the  ear  and  appre- 
hension of  a  stranger,  distinguished  as  one  of  the  best 
judges  in  Europe."  Algarotti  replied  that  England,  which 
had  already  enjoyed  a  Homer,  an  Archimedes,  a  Demos- 
thenes, now  possessed  a  Pindar  also,  and  enclosed  "ob- 
servations, that  is,  panegyrics,"  on  the  Odes.  For  some 
months  the  correspondence  of  Count  Algarotti  enlivened 
"  the  nothingness  "  of  Gray's  history  at  Cambridge — "  a 
place,"  he  says,  "  where  no  events  grow,  though  we  pre- 
serve those  of  former  days  by  way  of  hortus  siccus  in  our 


158  GRAY.  [chap. 

libraries."  In  November,  1763,  the  Count  announced  his 
intention  of  visiting  England,  where  he  proposed  to  pub- 
lish a  magnificent  edition  of  his  own  works;  Gray  seems 
to  have  anticipated  pleasure  from  his  company,  but  Alga- 
rotti  never  came,  and  soon  died  rather  unexpectedly,  in 
Italy,  on  the  24th  of  May,  1764,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two. 

We  possess  some  of  the  notes  which  Gray  took  of  the 
habits  of  flowers  and  birds,  thus  anticipating  the  charm- 
ing observations  of  Gilbert  White.  At  Cambridge,  in 
1763,  crocus  and  hepatica  were  blossoming  through  the 
snow  in  the  college  garden  on  the  12th  of  February ;  nine 
days  later  brought  the  first  white  butterfly ;  on  the  5th 
of  March  Gray  heard  the  thrush  sing,  and  on  the  8th  the 
skylark.  The  same  warm  day  which  brought  the  lark 
opened  the  blossom-buds  of  the  apricots,  and  the  almond- 
trees  for  once  found  themselves  outrun  in  the  race  of 
spring.  These  notes  show  the  quickness  of  Gray's  eye 
and  his  quiet  ways.  It  is  only  the  silent,  clear-sighted 
man  that  knows  on  what  day  the  first  fall  of  lady-birds  is 
seen,  or  observes  the  redstart  sitting  on  her  eggs.  Gray's 
notes  for  the  spring  of  1763  read  like  fragments  of  a 
beautiful  poem,  and  are  scarcely  less  articulate  than  that 
little  trill  of  improvised  song  which  Norton  Nichols  has 
preserved — 

"There  pipes  the  wood-lark,  and  the  song-thrush  there 
Scatters  his  loose  notes  in  the  waste  of  air  " — 

a  couplet  which  Gray  made  one  spring  morning  as  Nich- 
ols and  he  were  walking  in  the  fields  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Cambridge. 

To  this  period  should  be  attributed  the  one  section  of 
Gray's  poems  which  it  is  impossible  to  date  with  exact- 
ness, namely,  the    romantic    lyrics   paraphrased,  in    short 


vii.  I  NORTON  NICIIOLS.  159 

measures,  from  Icelandic  and  Gaelic  sources.1  When 
these  pieces  were  published,  in  1768,  Gray  prefixed  to 
them  an  "  advertisement,"  which  was  not  reprinted.  In 
this  he  connected  them  with  his  projected  History  of 
English  Poetry.  "  In  the  introduction "  to  that  work, 
"  he  meant  to  have  produced  some  specimens  of  the  style 
that  reigned  in  ancient  times  amongst  the  neighbouring 
nations,  or  those  who  had  subdued  the  greater  part  of 
this  island,  and  were  only  progenitors :  the  following 
three  imitations  made  a  part  of  them/'  The  three  imi- 
tations are  The  Fatal  Sisters,  The  Descent  of  Odin,  and 
The  Triumphs  of  Owen.  To  these  must  be  added  the 
smaller  fragments,  The  Death  of  Hoel,  Caradoc,  and  Co- 
non,  discovered  amongst  Gray's  papers,  and  first  printed 
by  Mason.  These,  then,  form  a  division  of  Gray's  poeti- 
cal work  not  inconsiderable  in  extent,  remarkably  homo- 
geneous in  style  and  substance,  and  entirely  distinct  from 
anything  else  which  he  wrote.  In  these  paraphrases  of 
archaic  chants  he  appears  as  a  purely  romantic  poet,  and 
heralds  the  approach  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  the  whole 
revival  of  Northern  romance.  The  Norse  pieces  are,  per- 
haps, more  interesting  than  the  Celtic ;  they  are  longer, 
and  to  modern  scholarship  seem  more  authentic,  at  all 
events  more  in  the  general  current  of  literature.  More- 
over, they  were  translated  direct  from  the  Icelandic, 
whereas  there  is  no  absolute  proof  that  Gray  was  a 
Welsh  scholar.  It  may  well  inspire  us  with  admiration 
of  the  poet's  intellectual  energy  to  find  that  he  had  mas- 
tered a  language  which  was  hardly  known,  at  that  time, 
by  any  one  in  Europe,  except  a  few  learned  Icelanders, 
whose  native  tongue  made  it  easy  for  them  to  understand 

1  I  notice  that  The  Fatal  Sisters  and  The  Descent  of  Odin  bear 
the  date  1761  in  the  Pembroke  MSS. 
8 


160  GRAY.  [chap. 

Norroena.  Gray  must  have  puzzled  it  out  for  himself, 
probably  with  the  help  of  the  Index  Linguae  Scytho- 
ScandiccB  of  Verelius.  At  that  time  what  he  rightly 
calls  the  Norse  tongue  was  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of 
mystery;  it  was  called  "Runick,"  and  its  roots  were  sup- 
posed to  be  derived  from  the  Hebrew.  The  Fatal  Sis- 
ters is  a  lay  of  the  eleventh  century,  the  text  of  which 
Gray  found  in  one  of  the  compilations  of  Torfoeus  (Thor- 
mod  Torveson),  a  great  collector  of  ancient  Icelandic  vel- 
lums at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  a 
monologue,  sung  by  one  of  the  Valkyriur,  or  Choosers  of 
the  Slain,  to  her  three  sisters ;  the  measure  is  one  of  great 
force  and  fire,  an  alternate  rhyming  of  seven-syllable  lines, 
of  which  this  is  a  specimen: 

"  Now  the  storm  begins  to  lower 

(Haste,  the  loom  of  Hell  prepare !) : 
Iron-sleet  of  arrowy  shower 
Hurtles  in  the  darkened  air. 


"  Ere  the  ruddy  sun  be  set 

Pikes  must  shiver,  javelins  sing, 
Blade  with  clatteriug  buckler  meet, 
Hauberk  crash,  and  helmet  ring. 

"  Sisters,  hence  with  spurs  of  speed ; 
Each  her  thundering  faulchion  wield ; 
Each  bestride  her  sable  steed — 
Hurry,  hurry  to  the  field !" 

The  Descent  of  Odin  is  a  finer  poem,  better  para- 
phrased. Gray  found  the  original  in  a  book  by  Bartoli- 
nus,  one  of  the  five  great  physicians  of  that  name  who 
flourished  in  Denmark  during  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  poem  itself  is  the  Vegtamskvida,  one  of  the  most 
powerful   and   mysterious   of  those   ancient   lays   which 


vii.]  NORTON  NICHOLS.  161 

form  the  earliest  collection  we  possess  of  Scandinavian 
poetry.  It  is  probable  that  Gray  never  saw  the  tolerably 
complete  but  very  inaccurate  edition  of  Soemundar  Edda 
which  existed  in  his  time,  nor  knew  the  wonderful  his- 
tory of  this  collection,  which  was  discovered  in  Iceland, 
in  1643,  by  Brynjolfr  Sveinnson,  Bishop  of  Skalaholt. 
The  text  which  Gray  found  in  Bartolinus,  however,  was 
sufficiently  true  to  enable  him  to  make  a  better  transla- 
tion of  the  Vegtamskvida  than  any  which  has  been  at- 
tempted since,  and  to  make  us  deeply  regret  that  he  did 
not  "imitate"  more  of  these  noble  Eddaic  chants.  He 
even  attempts  a  philological  ingenuity,  for,  finding  that 
Odin,  to  conceal  his  true  nature  from  the  Volva,  calls 
himself  Vegtam,  Gray  translates  this  strange  word  "  trav- 
eller," evidently  tracing  it  to  veg,  a  way.  He  omits  the 
first  stave,  which  recounts  how  the  ^Esir  sat  in  council  to 
deliberate  on  the  dreams  of  Balder,  and  he  also  omits 
four  spurious  stanzas,  in  this  showing  a  critical  tact  little 
short  of  miraculous,  considering  the  condition  of  scholar- 
ship at  that  time.  The  version  itself  is  as  poetical  as  it 
is  exact : 

"  Right  against  the  eastern  gate, 
By  the  moss-grown  pile  he  sate, 
Where  long  of  yore  to  sleep  was  laid 
The  dust  of  the  prophetic  maid. 
Facing  to  the  Northern  clime, 
Thrice  he  traced  the  Runic  rhyme ; 
Thrice  pronounced,  in  accents  dread, 
The  thrilling  verse  that  wakes  the  dead ; 
Till  from  out  the  hollow  ground 
Slowly  breathed  a  sullen  sound." 


Or— 


"  Mantling  in  the  goblet  see 
The  pure  beverage  of  the  bee  ; 


162  GRAY.  [chap. 

O'er  it  hangs  the  shield  of  gold ; 
'Tis  the  drink  of  Balder  bold. 
Balder's  head  to  death  is  given. 
Pain  can  reach  the  sons  of  Heaven ! 
Unwilling  I  my  lips  unclose — 
Leave  me,  leave  me  to  repose — " 

must  be  compared  with  the  original  to  show  how  thor- 
oughly the  terse  and  rapid  evolution  of  the  strange  old 
lay  has  been  preserved,  though  the  concise  expression  has 
throughout  been  modernized  and  rendered  intelligible. 

In  these  short  pieces  we  see  the  beginning  of  that  re- 
turn to  old  Norse  themes  which  has  been  carried  so  far 
and  so  brilliantly  by  later  poets.  It  is  a  very  curious 
thing  that  Gray  in  this  anticipated,  not  merely  his  own 
countrymen,  but  the  Scandinavians  themselves.  The  first 
poems  in  which  a  Danish  poet  showed  any  intelligent  ap- 
preciation of  his  national  mythology  and  history  were 
the  Rolf  Krake  and  Balder's  Dbd  of  Johannes  Ewald, 
published  respectively  in  1770  and  1773.  Gray,  therefore, 
takes  the  precedence  not  only  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Mr. 
Morris,  and  other  British  poets,  but  even  of  the  countless 
Danish,  Swedish,  and  German  writers  who  for  a  century 
past  have  celebrated  the  adventures  of  the  archaic  heroes 
of  their  race. 

In  a  century  which  was  inclined  to  begin  the  history  of 
English  poetry  with  the  Life  of  Cowley,  and  which  dis- 
trusted all  that  was  ancient,  as  being  certainly  rude  and 
probably  worthless,  Gray  held  the  opinion,  which  he  ex- 
presses* in  a  letter  of  the  17th  of  February,  1763,  "that, 
without  any  respect  of  climates,  imagination  reigns  in  all 
nascent  societies  of  men,  where  the  necessaries  of  life  force 
every  one  to  think  and  act  much  for  himself."  This  crit- 
ical temper  attracted  him  to  the  Edda,  made  him  indul- 


vii.  J  NORTON  NICHOLS.  163 

gent  to  Ossian,  and  led  him  to  see  more  poetry  in  the 
ancient  songs  of  Wales  than  most  non-Celtic  readers  can 
discover  there.  In  1764  Evans  published  his  Specimens 
of  Welsh  Poetry,  and  in  that  bulky  quarto  Gray  met  with 
a  Latin  prose  translation  of  the  chant,  written  about  1158 
by  Gwalchmai,  in  praise  of  his  master,  Owen  Gwynedd. 
The  same  Evans  gave  a  variety  of  extracts  from  the  "Welsh 
epic,  the  Gododin,  and  three  of  these  fragments  Gray 
turned  into  English  rhyme.  One  has  something  of  the 
concision  of  an  epigram  from  the  Greek  mythology : 

"  Have  ye  seen  the  tusky  boar, 
Or  the  bull,  with  sullen  roar, 
On  surrounding  foes  advance  ? 
So  Caradoc  bore  his  lance." 

The  others  are  not  nearly  equal  in  poetical  merit  to 
the  Scandinavian  paraphrases.  Gray  does  not  seem  to 
have  shown  these  romances  to  his  friends  with  the  same 
readiness  that  he  displayed  on  other  occasions.  From 
critics  like  Hurd  and  Warburton  he  could  expect  no  ap- 
proval of  themes  taken  from  an  antique  civilisation.  Wal- 
pole,  who  did  not  see  these  poems  till  they  were  printed, 
asks :  "  Who  can  care  through  what  horrors  a  Runic  sav- 
age arrived  at  all  the  joys  and  glories  they  could  conceive 
— the  supreme  felicity  of  boozing  ale  out  of  the  skull  of 
an  enemy  in  Odin's  Hall  ?"  This  is  quite  a  characteristic 
expression  of  that  wonderful  eighteenth  century  through 
which  poor  Gray  wandered  in  a  life-long  exile.  The  au- 
thor of  the  Vegtamskvida  a  "  Runic  savage  !"  No  wonder 
Gray  kept  his  "  Imitations  "  safely  out  of  the  sight  of  such 
critics. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LIFE    AT    CAMBRIDGE. ENGLISH    TRAVELS. 

The  seven  remaining  years  of  Gray's  life  were  even  less 
eventful  than  those  which  we  have  already  examined.  In 
November,  1763,  he  began  to  find  that  a  complaint  which 
had  long  troubled  him,  the  result  of  failing  constitution, 
had  become  almost  constant.  For  eight  or  nine  months 
he  was  an  acute  sufferer,  until  in  July,  1764,  he  consented 
to  undergo  the  operation  without  which  he  could  not  have 
continued  to  live.  Dr.  Wharton  volunteered  to  come  up 
from  Durham,  and,  if  not  to  perform  the  act,  to  support 
his  friend  in  "the  perilous  hour."  But  Gray  preferred 
that  the  Cambridge  surgeon  should  attend  him,  and  the 
operation  was  not  only  performed  successfully,  but  the 
poet  was  able  to  sustain  the  much-dreaded  suffering  with 
fortitude.  As  he  was  beginning  to  get  about  again  the 
gout  came  in  one  foot,  "but  so  tame  you  might  have 
stroked  it,  such  a  minikin  you  might  have  played  with  it; 
in  three  or  four  days  it  had  disappeared."  This  gout, 
which  troubled  him  so  constantly,  and  was  fatal  to  him 
at  last,  was  hereditary,  and  not  caused  by  any  excess  in 
eating  or  drinking ;  Gray  was,  in  fact,  singularly  abstemi- 
ous, and  it  was  one  of  the  accusations  of  his  enemies  that 
he  affected  to  be  so  dainty  that  he  could  touch  nothing 
less  delicate  than  apricot  marmalade. 


chap.  Yin.]  LIFE  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  165 

Whilst  Gray  was  lying  ill  Lord  Chancellor  Hardwicke 
died,  at  the  age  of  seventy -four,  on  the  16th  of  May, 
1764.  The  office  of  Seneschal  of  the  University  was  thus 
vacated,  and  there  ensued  a  very  violent  contest,  and  the 
result  of  which  was  that  Philip  Hardwicke  succeeded  to 
his  father's  honours  by  a  majority  of  one,  and  the  other 
candidate,  the  notorious  John,  Earl  of  Sandwich,  though 
supported  by  the  aged  Dr.  Roger  Long  and  other  clerical 
magnates,  was  rejected.  Gray,  to  whom  the  tarnished 
reputation  of  Lord  Sandwich  was  in  the  highest  degree 
abhorrent,  swelled  the  storm  of  electioneering  by  a  lam- 
poon, The  Candidate,  beginning : 

"  When  sly  Jemmy  Twitcher  had  smugged  up  his  face, 
With  a  lick  of  court  white-wash  and  pious  grimace, 
A-wooing  he  went,  where  three  sisters  of  old 
In  harmless  society  guttle  and  scold." 

Lord  Sandwich  found  that  this  squib  was  not  without 
its  instant  and  practical  effect,  and  he  attempted  to  win 
so  dangerous  an  opponent  to  his  side.  What  means  he 
adopted  cannot  be  conjectured,  but  they  were  unsuccessful. 
Lord  Sandwich  said  to  Cradock,  "  I  have  my  private  rea- 
sons for  knowing  Gray's  absolute  inveteracy."  The  Can- 
didate found  its  way  into  print  long  after  Gray's  death, 
but  only  in  a  fragmentary  form ;  and  the  same  has  hith- 
erto been  true  of  Tophet,  of  which  I  am  able  to  give,  for 
the  first  time,  a  complete  text  from  the  Pembroke  MSS. 
One  of  Gray's  particular  friends,  "  placid  Mr.  Tyson  of 
Bene't  College,"  made  a  drawing  of  the  Rev.  Henry 
Etough,  a  converted  Jew,  a  man  of  slanderous  and  vio- 
lent temper,  who  had  climbed  into  high  preferment  in 
the  Church  of  England.  Underneath  this  very  rude  and 
hideous  caricature  Gray  wrote  these  lines : 


166  GRAY.  [chap. 

"Thus  Tophet  look'd:  so  grinn'd  the  brawling  fiend, 
Whilst  frighted  prelates  bow'd  and  call'd  him  friend ; 
I  saw  them  bow,  and,  while  they  wish'd  him  dead, 
With  servile  simper  nod  the  mitred  head. 
Our  mother-church,  with  half-averted  sight, 
Blush'd  as  she  bless'd  her  grisly  proselyte ; 
Hosanna3  rang  through  hell's  tremendous  borders, 
And  Satan's  self  had  thoughts  of  taking  orders." 


These  two  pieces,  however,  are  very  far  from  being  the 
only  effusions  of  the  kind  which  Gray  wrote.  Mason 
appears  to  have  made  a  collection  of  Gray's  Cambridge 
squibs,  which  he  did  not  venture  to  print.  A  Satire  upon 
Heads ;  or,  Never  a  Barrel  the  Better  Herring,  a  comic 
piece  in  which  Gray  attacked  the  prominent  heads  of 
houses,  was  in  existence  as  late  as  1854,  but  has  never 
been  printed,  and  has  evaded  my  careful  search.  These 
squibs  are  said  to  have  been  widely  circulated  in  Cam- 
bridge—  so  widely  as  to  frighten  the  timid  poet,  and  to 
have  been  retained  as  part  of  the  tradition  of  Pembroke 
common-room  until  long  after  Gray's  death.  I  am  told 
that  Mason's  set  of  copies  of  these  poems,  of  which  I  have 
seen  a  list,  turned  up,  during  the  present  century,  in  the 
library  of  a  cathedral  in  the  North  of  England.  This  may 
give  some  clue  to  their  ultimate  discovery.  They  might 
prove  to  be  coarse  and  slight;  they  could  not  fail  to  be 
biographically  interesting. 

In  October,  1764,  Gray  set  out  upon  what  he  called  his 
"  Lilliputian  travels  "  in  the  South  of  England.  He  went 
down  by  Winchester  to  Southampton,  stayed  there  some 
weeks,  and  then  returned  to  London  by  Salisbury,  Wilton, 
Amesbury,  and  Stonehenge.  "  I  proceed  to  tell  you,"  he 
says  to  Norton  Nichols,  "  that  my  health  is  much  im- 
proved by  the  sea ;  not  that  I  drank  it,  or  bathed  in  it,  as 


Tin.  J  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  1G7 

the  common  people  do.  No !  I  only  walked  by  it  and 
looked  upon  it."  His  description  of  Netley  Abbey,  in  a 
letter  to  Dr.  Brown,  is  very  delicate :  "  It  stands  in  a  little 
quiet  valley,  which  gradually  rises  behind  the  ruins  into  a 
half-circle,  crowned  with  thick  wood.  Before  it,  on  a  de- 
scent, is  a  thicket  of  oaks,  that  serves  to  veil  it  from  the 
broad  day,  and  from  profane  eyes,  only  leaving  a  peep  on 
both  sides,  where  the  sea  appears  glittering  through  the 
shade,  and  vessels,  with  their  white  sails,  glide  across  and 
are  lost  again.  ...  I  should  tell  you  that  the  ferryman 
who  rowed  me,  a  lusty  young  fellow,  told  me  that  he 
would  not,  for  all  the  world,  pass  a  night  at  the  Abbey, 
there  were  such  things  seen  near  it."  Still  more  pictu- 
resque —  indeed,  showing  an  eye  for  nature  which  was 
then  without  a  precedent  in  modern  literature  —  is  this 
passage  from  a  letter  of  this  time  to  Norton  Nichols : 

"I  must  not  close  my  letter  without  giving  you  one  principal 
event  of  my  history ;  which  was,  that  (in  the  course  of  my  late  tour) 
i  I  set  out  one  morning  before  five  o'clock,  the  moon  shining  through 
a  dark  and  misty  autumnal  air,  and  got  to  the  sea-coast  time  enough 
to  be  at  the  sun's  levee.  I  saw  the  clouds  and  dark  vapours  open 
gradually  to  right  and  left,  rolling  over  one  another  in  great  smoky 
wreaths,  and  the  tide  (as  it  flowed  gently  in  upon  the  sands)  first 
whitening,  then  slightly  tinged  with  gold  and  blue  Jand  all  at  once 
a  little  line  of  insufferable  brightness  that  (before  I  can  write  these 
few  words)  was  grown  to  half  an  orb,  and  now  to  a  whole  one,  too 
glorious  to  be  distinctly  seen.  It  is  very  odd  it  makes  no  figure  on 
paper ;  yet  I  shall  remember  it  as  long  as  the  sun,  or  at  least  as  long 
as  I  endure.  I  wonder  whether  anybody  ever  saw  it  before  ?  I 
hardly  believe  it." 

In    November   Gray    was   laid  up  again   with    illness, 

being  threatened   this  time   with    blindness,  a    calamity 

which  passed  off  favourably.     He  celebrated  the  death  of 

Churchill,  which  occurred  at  this  time,  by  writing  what 

M     8*  35 


168  GRAY.  [chap. 

he  calls  "The  Temple  of  Tragedy."  We  do  not  know 
what  this  may  have  been,  but  it  would  not  be  inspired 
by  love  of  Churchill,  who,  in  the  course  of  his  brief  rush 
through  literature  in  the  guise  of  a  "  rogue "  elephant, 
had  annoyed  Gray,  though  he  had  never  tossed  him  or 
trampled  on  him.  Gray  bought  all  the  pamphlet  satires 
of  Churchill  as  they  appeared,  and  enriched  them  with  an- 
notations. In  his  collection  the  Ghost  alone  is  missing, 
perhaps  because  of  the  allusions  it  contained  to  himself. 

On  the  24th  of  December,  1764,  that  Gothic  romance, 
the  Castle  of  Otranto,  was  published  anonymously.  It 
was  almost  universally  attributed  to  Gray,  to  the  surprise 
and  indignation  of  Horace  Walpole,  who  said  of  his  own 
work,  modestly  enough,  that  people  must  be  fools  indeed 
to  think  such  a  trifle  worthy  of  a  genius  like  Gray.  The 
reputation  of  the  poet  as  an  antiquarian  and  a  lover  of 
romantic  antiquity  probably  led  to  this  mistake.  At 
Cambridge  another  error  prevailed,  as  Gray  announces  to 
Walpole  within  a  week  of  the  publication  of  the  book: 
"  It  engages  our  attention  here,  makes  some  of  us  cry  a 
little,  and  all  in  general  afraid  to  go  to  bed  o'  nights. 
We  take  it  for  a  translation,  and  should  believe  it  to  be 
a  true  story  if  it  were  not  for  St.  Nicholas."  This  novel, 
poor  as  it  is,  was  a  not  inconsiderable  link  in  the  chain 
of  romantic  revival  started  by  Gray. 

We  have  little  record  of  the  poet's  life  during  the  early 
months  of  1765.  In  June  he  was  laid  up  with  gout  at 
York,  while  paying  a  visit  to  Mason,  and  in  July  went  on 
to  drink  the  waters  and  walk  by  the  sea  at  Hartlepool. 
From  this  place  he  sent  to  Mason  some  excellent  stanzas 
which  have  never  found  their  way  into  his  works;  they 
are  supposed  to  be  indited  by  William  Shakspeare  in  per- 
son, and  to  be  a  complaint  of  his  sufferings  at  the  hands  of 


viii.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  16ft 

his  commentators.    The  poem  is  in  the  metre  of  the  Elegy, 
and  is  a  very  grave  specimen  of  the  mock-heroic  style : 

"  Better  to  bottom  tarts  and  cheesecakes  nice, 
Better  the  roast  meat  from  the  fire  to  save, 
Better  be  twisted  into  caps  for  spice, 
Than  thus  be  patched  and  cobbled  in  one's  grave." 

What  would  Gray,  and  still  more  what  would  Shak- 
speare  say  to  the  vapid  confusion  of  opinions  which  have 
been  laid  on  the  bard's  memory  during  the  century  that 
now  intervenes  between  these  verses  and  ourselves  —  a 
heap  of  dirt  and  stones  which  he  must  laboriously  shovel 
away  who  would  read  the  true  inscription  on  the  Proph- 
et's tomb  ?  For  criticism  of  the  type  which  has  now  be- 
come so  common,  for  the  counting  of  syllables  and  weigh- 
ing of  commas,  Gray,  with  all  his  punctilio  and  his  minute 
scholarship,  had  nothing  but  contempt : 

"  Much  I  have  borne  from  cankered  critic's  spite, 

From  fumbling  baronets,  and  poets  small, 

Pert  barristers,  and  parsons  nothing  bright — 

But  what  awaits  me  now  is  worst  of  all." 

Mason  at  last,  at  the  age  of  forty,  had  fallen  in  love 
with  a  lady  of  small  fortune  and  less  personal  appearance, 
but  very  sweet  manners;  and  whilst  Gray  was  still  lin- 
gering in  the  North  his  friend  married.  Meantime  Gray 
passed  on  to  Old  Park,  and  spent  the  month  of  August 
with  the  Whartons.  From  this  place  he  went  to  stay 
with  Lord  Strathmore  at  Hetton,  in  Durham,  and  towards 
the  beginning  of  September  set  out,  with  his  host  and 
Major  Lyon,  his  brother,  for  Scotland.  The  first  night 
was  passed  at  Tweedmouth,  and  the  second  at  Edinburgh 
("  that  most  picturesque  at  a  distance,  and  nastiest  when 
near,  of  all  capital  cities ").     Gray  was  instantly  received 


170  GRAY.  [chap. 

with  honour  by  the  Scotch  literati.  On  the  evening  of 
his  arrival  he  supped  with  Dr.  W.  Robertson  and  other 
leading  men  of  letters.  Next  day  the  party  crossed  the 
Forth  in  Lord  Strathmore's  yawl,  and  reached  Perth,  and 
by  dinner-time  on  the  fourth  day  arrived  at  Glamis.  Here 
Gray  was  extremely  happy  for  some  bright  weeks,  charmed 
with  the  beauty  of  the  scenery  and  the  novelty  of  the  life, 
soothed  and  delighted  by  the  refined  hospitality  of  the 
Lyons,  three  of  whom,  including  Lord  Strathmore,  he  had 
known  as  undergraduates  at  Cambridge,  and  enchanted  to 
hear  spoken  and  sung  on  all  sides  of  him  the  magical 
language  of  Ossian.  On  the  11th  of  September  Lord 
Strathmore  took  him  for  a  tour  of  five  days  in  the  High- 
lands, showed  him  Dunkeld,  Taymouth,  and  the  falls  of 
Tummell,  the  Pass  of  Killiekrankie,  Blair-Athol,  and  the 
peaks  of  the  Grampians.  "  In  short,"  he  says,  "  since  I 
saw  the  Alps,  I  have  seen  nothing  sublime  till  now." 

Immediately  on  his  arrival  at  Glamis  he  had  received 
an  exceedingly  polite  letter  from  the  poet  Beattie,who  was 
a  professor  at  Aberdeen,  pressing  him  to  visit  that  city, 
and  requesting  that,  if  this  was  impossible,  he  himself 
might  be  allowed  to  travel  southward  to  Glamis,  to  pre- 
sent his  compliments  to  Gray.  At  the  same  time  the 
University  of  Aberdeen  offered  him  the  degree  of  doctor 
of  laws.  Gray  declined  both  the  invitation  and  the  hon- 
our, but  said  that  Lord  Strathmore  would  be  very  glad 
to  see  Beattie  at  Glamis.  The  younger  poet  accordingly 
posted  to  lay  his  enthusiasm  at  the  feet  of  the  elder,  and 
Gray  received  him  with  unwonted  openness  and  a  sort  of 
intimate  candour  rare  with  him.  Beattie  reports,  amongst 
other  things,  that  Dryden  was  mentioned  by  him  with 
scant  respect,  upon  which  Gray  remarked  "  that  if  there 
was  any  excellence  in  his  own  numbers,  he  had  learned  it 


viii.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS  171 

wholly  from  that  great  poet.  And  presaed  him  with  great 
earnestness  to  study  him,  as  his  choice  of  words  and  ver- 
sification were  singularly  happy  and  harmonious." 

Gray  came  back  from  the  mountains  with  feelings  far 
other  than  those  in  which  Dr.  Johnson  indulged  when  he 
found  himself  safe  once  more  in  the  latitude  of  Fleet 
Street.  "  I  am  returned  from  Scotland,"  says  the  poet, 
"  charmed  with  my  expedition ;  it  is  of  the  Highlands  I 
speak ;  the  Lowlands  are  worth  seeing  once,  but  the  moun. 
tains  are  ecstatic,  and  ought  to  be  visited  in  pilgrimage 
once  a  year.  None  but  these  monstrous  children  of  God 
know  how  to  join  so  much  beauty  with  so  much  horror. 
A  fig  for  your  poets,  painters,  gardeners,  and  clergymen 
that  have  not  been  amongst  them  ;  their  imagination  can  be 
made  up  of  nothing  but  bowling-greens,  flowering  shrubs, 
horse-ponds,  Fleet-ditches,  shell  grottoes,  and  Chinese  rails. 
Then  I  had  so  beautiful  an  autumn,  Italy  could  hardly  pro- 
duce a  nobler  scene,  and  this  so  sweetly  contrasted  with 
that  perfection  of  nastiness,  and  total  want  of  accommo- 
dation, that  Scotland  can  only  supply." 

Mason  had  married  on  the  25th  of  September,  and 
greatly  desired  that  Gray,  when  passing  southward  to- 
wards the  end  of  October,  should  come  and  be  the  wit- 
ness of  his  felicity  at  Aston,  but  Gray  excused  himself 
on  the  ground  that  his  funds  were  exhausted,  and  went 
straight  through  to  London.  There  he  found  his  old 
friend  Harriet  Speed,  now  Madame  de  la  Peyriere,  whose 
husband  was  in  the  Italian  diplomatic  service.  She  was 
exceedingly  glad  to  receive  him,  and  welcomed  him  with 
two  little  dogs  on  her  lap,  a  cockatoo  on  her  shoulder,  a 
piping  bullfinch  at  her  elbow,  and  a  strong  suspicion  of 
rouge  on  her  cheeks.  For  about  six  months  after  the 
tour  in   Scotland  Gray  enjoyed  very  tolerable  health,  re- 


172  GRAY.  [chap. 

maining,  however,  entirely  indolent  as  far  as  literature  was 
concerned.  When  Walpole  told  him  he  ought  to  write 
more  he  replied,  "  What  has  one  to  do,  when  turned  of 
fifty,  but  really  to  think  of  finishing  ?  However,  I  will 
be  candid,  for  you  seem  to  be  so  with  me,  and  avow  to 
you  that  till  fourscore  and  upwards,  whenever  the  humour 
takes  me,  I  will  write ;  because  I  like  it,  and  because  I 
like  myself  better  when  I  do  so.  If  I  do  not  write  much 
it  is  because  I  cannot." 

Henceforward  the  chief  events  in  Gray's  life  were  his 
summer  holidays.  In  May  and  June,  1766,  he  paid  a 
visit  to  the  friend  whom  he  called  Reverend  Billy,  the 
Rev.  William  Robinson,  younger  brother  of  the  famous 
Mrs.  Montagu.  This  gentleman  was  rector  of  Denton, 
in  the  county  of  Kent,  a  little  quiet  valley  some  eight 
miles  to  the  east  of  Canterbury  and  near  the  sea.  Gray 
took  the  opportunity  of  visiting  Margate  and  Ramsgate, 
which  were  just  beginning  to  become  resorts  for  holiday 
folk.  It  is  related  that  at  the  latter  place  the  friends  went 
to  inspect  the  new  pier,  then  lately  completed.  Somebody 
said,  seeing  it  forlorn  and  empty,  "  What  did  they  make 
this  pier  for  ?"  whereupon  Gray  smartly  replied,  "  For  me 
to  walk  on,"  and  proceeded  to  claim  possession  of  it,  by 
striding  along  it.  He  visited  the  whole  coast  of  Kent, 
as  far  as  Hythe,  in  company  with  Mr.  Robinson.  The 
county  charmed  him.    He  wrote  to  Norton  Nichols : 

"  The  country  is  all  a  garden,  gay,  rich,  and  fruitful,  and  from  the 
rainy  season  had  preserved,  till  I  left  it,  all  that  emerald  verdure 
which  commonly  one  only  sees  for  the  first  fortnight  of  the  spring. 
In  the  west  part  of  it  from  every  eminence  the  eye  catches  some 
long  winding  reach  of  the  Thames  or  Medway,  with  all  their  navi- 
gation ;  in  the  east  the  sea  breaks  in  upon  you,  and  mixes  its  white 
transient   sails    and  glittering  blue  expanse  with  the   deeper   and 


Tin.  |  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  173 

brighter  greens  of  the  woods  and  the  corn.  This  last  sentence  is 
so  fine,  I  am  quite  ashamed  ;  but,  no  matter !  you  must  translate 
it  into  prose.  Palgrave,  if  he  heard  it,  would  cover  his  face  with 
his  pudding  sleeve." 

He  read  the  Neio  Bath  Guide,  which  had  just  appeared, 
and  was  tempted  to  indulge  in  satire  of  a  different  sort, 
by  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Formian  villa  built  by  the 
late  Lord  Holland  at  Kingsgate.  These  powerful  verses 
were  found  in  a  drawer  at  Denton  after  Gray  had  left : 

"  Old,  and  abandoned  by  each  venal  friend, 
Here  Holland  formed  the  pious  resolution 
To  smuggle  a  few  years  and  try  to  mend 
A  broken  character  and  constitution. 

"  On  this  congenial  spot  he  fixed  his  choice : 

Earl  Goodwin  trembled  for  his  neighbouring  sand ; 
Here  sea-gulls  scream,  and  cormorants  rejoice, 
And  mariners,  though  shipwrecked,  dread  to  land. 

"  Here  reign  the  blustering  North  and  blighting  East, 
No  tree  is  heard  to  whisper,  bird  to  sing ; 
Yet  Nature  could  not  furnish  out  the  feast, 
Art  he  invokes  new  horrors  still  to  bring. 

"  Here  mouldering  fanes  and  battlements  arise, 
Turrets  and  arches  nodding  to  their  fall ; 
Unpeopled  monasteries  delude  our  eyes, 
And  mimic  desolation  covers  all. 

"  'Ah  f  said  the  sighing  peer,  '  had  Bute  been  true, 
Nor  Mungo's,  Rigby's,  Bradshaw's  friendship  vain, 
Far  better  scenes  than  these  had  blest  our  view, 
And  realized  the  beauties  which  we  feign : 


•-> 


*' '  Purged  by  the  sword,  and  purified  by  fire, 

Then  had  we  seen  proud  London's  hated  walls; 
Owls  might  have  hooted  in  St.  Peter's  choir, 
And  foxes  stunk  and  littered  in  St.  Paul's.' " 


174  GRAY.  [chap 

In  November,  1766,  Mason  came  to  visit  Gray  in  his 
lodgings  in  Jermyn  Street,  and  brought  his  wife,  "a  pretty, 
modest,  innocent,  interesting  figure,  looking  like  eighteen, 
though  she  is  near  twenty -eight."  She  was  far  gone  in 
consumption,  but  preserved  a  muscular  strength  and  con- 
stitutional energy  which  deceived  those  who  surrounded 
her.  The  winter  of  1766  tried  her  endurance  very  severely, 
and  she  gradually  sank.  On  the  27th  of  March,  1767,  after 
a  married  life  of  only  eighteen  months,  she  expired  in  Ma- 
son's arms,  at  Bristol.  Gray's  correspondence  through  the 
three  months  which  preceded  her  end  displays  a  constant 
and  lively  concern,  which  reached  its  climax  in  the  exqui- 
site letter  which  he  wrote  to  Mason  the  day  after  her  death, 
before  the  fatal  news  had  reached  him.  In  the  whole  cor- 
respondence of  a  man  whose  unaffected  sympathy  was  al- 
ways at  the  service  of  his  friends  there  is  no  expression  of 
it  more  touching  than  this: 

"March  28, 1767. 
"  My  dear  Mason, — I  break  in  upon  you  at  a  moment  when  we 
least  of  all  are  permitted  to  disturb  our  friends,  only  to  say  that  you 
are  daily  and  hourly  present  to  my  thoughts.  If  the  worst  be  not 
yet  past,  you  will  neglect  and  pardon  me ;  but  if  the  last  struggle  be 
over,  if  the  poor  object  of  your  long  anxieties  be  no  longer  sensible 
to  your  kindness  or  to  her  own  sufferings,  allow  me  (at  least  in  idea, 
for  what  could  I  do  were  I  present  more  than  this  ?)  to  sit  by  you  in 
silence,  and  pity  from  my  heart,  not  her  who  is  at  rest,  but  you  who 
lose  her.  May  He  who  made  us,  the  Master  of  our  pleasures  and  our 
pains,  preserve  and  support  you.  Adieu !  I  have  long  understood 
how  little  you  had  to  nope." 

About  a  month  earlier  than  this,  at  the  very  early  age 
of  thirty-six,  an  old  acquaintance  and  quondam  college 
friend  of  Gray's,  Frederic  Hervey,  was  presented  to  the 
diocese  of  Cloyne.  This  was  a  startling  rise  in  life  to  a 
ne'er-do-weel  of  good  family,  who  had  not  six  years  be- 


viii.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  175 

fore  been  begging  Mason  and  Gray  to  help  him,  and  who 
soon  after  this  became,  not  merely  Bishop  of  Derry,  but 
Earl  of  Bristol.  Gray  saw  a  good  deal  of  him  during  the 
summer  of  1767,  and  describes  how  they  ate  four  raspberry 
puffs  together  in  that  historical  pastry-cook's  at  the  corner 
of  Cranbourne  Street,  and  how  jolly  Hervey  was  at  finding 
himself  a  bishop.  Gray's  summer  holiday  in  1767  was 
again  spent  among  the  mountains.  In  June  he  went 
down  to  Aston  to  console  Mason,  and  with  him  visited 
Dovedaie  and  the  wonders  of  the  Peak.  Early  in  July 
Gray  set  out  by  York  to  stay  with  Wharton  at  Old  Park, 
from  which  in  August  he  sent  back  to  Beattie  the  manu- 
script of  The  Minstrel,  which  that  poet  had  sent,  request- 
ing him  to  revise  it.  Gray  gave  a  great  deal  of  attention 
to  this  rather  worthless  production,  which  has  no  merit 
save  some  smoothness  in  the  use  of  the  Spenserian  stanza, 
and  which  owed  all  its  character  to  a  clever  poem  in  the 
same  manner,  published  twenty  years  earlier,  the  Psyche 
of  Dr.  Gloucester  Ridley,  a  poet  whose  name,  perhaps, 
may  yet  one  day  find  an  apologist.  Gray,  however,  never 
grudged  to  expend  his  critical  labour  to  the  advantage  of 
a  friend,  and  pruned  the  luxuriance  of  The  Minstrel  with 
a  serious  assiduity. 

Meanwhile  Lord  Strathmore  was  at  hand,  marrying 
himself  to  a  great  Durham  heiress;  Gray  made  a  trip  to 
Hartlepool  in  August,  and  coming  back  stayed  with  the 
newly-wedded  earl  and  countess  at  their  castle  of  Gibside, 
near  Ravensworth.  On  the  29th  of  August  he  and  Dr. 
Wharton  set  out  in  a  post-chaise  by  Newcastle  and  Hex- 
ham for  the  Lakes.  On  their  way  to  Carlisle  they  got 
soaked  in  the  rain,  and  Wharton  was  taken  so  ill  with 
asthma  at  Keswick  that  they  returned  home  to  Old  Park 
from  Cockermouth,  after  hardly  a  glimpse  of  the  moun- 


176  GRAY.  [chap. 

tains.  In  the  church  at  Appleby  the  epitaph  of  Anne, 
Countess  of  Dorset,  amused  Gray  by  its  pomposity,  and 
he  improvised  the  following  pleasing  variation  on  it: 

"  Now  clean,  now  hideous,  mellow  now,  now  gruff, 
She  swept,  she  hiss'd,  she  ripen'd,  and  grew  rough, 
At  Brougham,  Pendragon,  Appleby,  and  Brough." 

Mason  buried  his  wife  in  the  Cathedral  of  Bristol,  and 
on  the  tablet  which  bears  her  name  he  inscribed  a  brief 
elegy  which  has  outlived  all  the  rest  of  his  works,  and  is 
still  frequently  quoted  with  praise.     It  runs  thus : 

"  Take,  holy  earth  !  all  that  my  soul  holds  dear : 

Take  that  best  gift  which  Heaven  so  lately  gave. 
To  Bristol's  fount  I  bore  with  trembling  care 

Her  faded  form :  she  bow'd  to  taste  the  wave, 
And  died.     Does  Youth,  does  Beauty  read  the  line  ? 

Does  sympathetic  fear  their  breasts  alarm  ? 
Speak,  dead  Maria  !  breathe  a  strain  divine : 

E'en  from  the  grave  thou  shalt  have  power  to  charm. 
Bid  them  be  chaste,  be  innocent  like  thee ; 

Bid  them  in  duty's  sphere  as  meekly  move ; 
And  if  so  fair,  from  vanity  as  free, 

As  firm  in  friendship,  and  as  fond  in  love, 
Tell  them,  though  His  an  awful  thing  to  die 

('Twos  ev'n  to  thee),  yet  tlie  dread  path  once  trod, 
Heaven  lifts  its  everlasting  portals  high, 

And  bids  the  pure  in  Jieart  behold  their  God." 

The  last  four  lines  have  the  ring  of  genuine  poetry,  and 
surpass  the  rest  of  Mason's  productions  in  verse  as  gold 
surpasses  dross.  It  is  a  very  curious  thing  that  he  does, 
in  fact,  owe  his  position  as  a  poet  to  some  lines  which  he 
did  not  write  himself.  As  long  as  he  lived,  and  for  many 
years  after  his  death,  the  secret  was  kept,  but  at  last  Nor- 
ton Nichols  confessed  that  the  beautiful  quatrain  in  italics 


viii.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  177 

was  entirely  composed  by  Gray.  Nichols  was  with  the 
elder  poet  at  the  time  when  the  MS.  arrived,  and  Gray 
showed  it  to  him,  with  Mason's  last  four  lines  erased. 
Gray  said,  "That  will  never  do  for  an  ending;  I  have  al- 
tered it  thus,"  and  thereupon  wrote  in  the  stanza  as  we 
now  know  it.  Nichols  says  that  Mason's  finale  was  weak, 
with  a  languid  repetition  of  some  preceding  expressions ; 
and  he  took  the  occasion  to  criticise  the  whole  of  Mason's 
poetry  as  feeble  and  tame.  "  No  wonder,"  said  Gray, 
"for  Mason  never  gives  himself  time  to  think.  If  his 
epithets  do  not  occur  readily,  he  leaves  spaces  for  them, 
and  puts  them  in  afterwards.  Mason  has  read  too  little 
and  written  too  much."  It  is  well  that  we  should  have 
this  side  of  the  question  stated,  for  Mason  loves  to  insinuate 
that  Gray  thought  him  a  poet  of  superlative  merit.  There 
was  no  love  lost  between  Mason  and  Nichols ;  and  if  the 
younger  carefully  preserved  Gray's  verdict  on  the  poetry 
of  the  elder,  Mason  revenged  himself  by  remarking  that  it 
was  a  good  thing  for  Nichols  that  Gray  never  discovered 
that  he  drank  like  a  fish.  We  are  reminded  of  the  wars 
of  Bozzy  and  Piozzi. 

In  the  spring  of  1767  Gray  met  Dodsley,  son  of  the 
great  publisher  and  heir  to  his  business,  and  was  asked 
by  him  to  consent  to  the  republication  of  his  poems  in 
a  cheap  form.  It  was  found  that  Bentley's  designs  were 
worn  out,  and  therefore  it  was  determined  to  omit  all 
illustrations,  and  with  them  the  Long  Story,  which  Gray 
thought  would  now  be  unintelligible.  Whilst  this  trans- 
action  was  loitering  along,  as  Gray's  business  was  apt  to 
loiter,  Beattie  wrote  to  him,  in  December,  17C7,  to  say 
that  Foulis,  an  enterprising  Glasgow  publisher,  was  anxious 
to  produce  the  same  collection.  Dodsley  made  no  objec- 
tion, and  so  exactly  the  same  matter  was  put  through  two 


178  GRAY.  [chap. 

presses  at  the  same  time.  In  neither  book  had  Gray  any 
pecuniary  interest.  There  had  been  no  explanatory  notes 
in  the  Odes  of  1757,  but  in  reprinting  these  poems,  eleven 
years  later,  he  added  a  few  "  out  of  spite,  because  the  pub- 
lic did  not  understand  the  two  odes  which  I  called  Pin- 
daric, though  the  first  was  not  very  dark,  and  the  second 
alluded  to  a  few  common  facts  to  be  found  in  any  sixpenny 
history  of  England,  by  way  of  question  and  answer,  for  the 
use  of  children."  He  added  to  what  had  already  appeared 
in  1753  and  1757  the  three  short  archaic  romances,  lest,  as 
he  said  to  Horace  Walpole,  "  my  works  should  be  mistaken 
for  the  works  of  a  flea,  or  a  pismire.  .  .  .  With  all  this  I 
shall  be  but  a  shrimp  of  an  author."  The  book,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  had  to  be  eked  out  with  blank  leaves  and  very 
wide  type  to  reach  the  sum  of  120  nominal  pages.  Dods- 
ley's  edition  was  not  a  beautiful  volume,  but  it  was  cheap ; 
it  appeared  in  July,  1768,  and  before  October  of  the  same 
year  two  impressions,  consisting  of  2250  copies,  had  been 
sold.  Foulis  came  out  with  his  far  more  handsome  Glas- 
gow edition  in  September,  and  this  also,  though  a  costly 
book,  of  which  a  very  large  number  of  copies  had  been 
struck  off,  was  sold  out  by  the  summer  of  1769,  when 
Foulis  made  Gray,  who  refused  money,  a  very  handsome 
present  of  books.  During  the  last  years  of  his  life,  then, 
Gray  was  not  only  beyond  dispute  the  greatest  living 
English  poet,  but  recognized  as  being  such  by  the  public 
itself. 

To  the  riotous  living  of  his  great  enemy,  Lord  Sand- 
wich, Gray  owed  the  preferment  which  raised  him  above 
all  fear  of  poverty  or  even  of  temporary  pressure  of  means 
during  the  last  three  years  of  his  life.  On  Sunday,  the 
24th  of  July,  1768,  Professor  Lawrence  Brockett,  who  had 
been  dining  with  the  earl  at  Hinchinbroke,  in  Huntingdon- 


thi.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  179 

shire,  whilst  riding  back  to  Cambridge,  being  very  drunk, 
fell  off  his  horse  and  broke  his  neck.  The  chair  of  Mod- 
ern Literature  and  Modern  Languages,  with  its  400^.  a 
year,  was  one  of  the  most  valuable  sinecures  in  the  Uni- 
versity. Gray  was  up  in  London  at  the  time,  but  his 
cousin,  Miss  Dolly  Antrobus,  for  whom  he  had  obtained 
the  office  of  post-mistress  at  Cambridge,  instantly  wrote 
up  to  town  to  tell  him.  He  did  not  stir  in  the  matter. 
With  an  admirable  briskness  five  obscure  dons  immediate- 
ly put  themselves  forward  as  candidates,  and  so  little  did 
Gray  expect  to  receive  the  place,  that  he  used  his  influence 
for  the  only  man  amongst  them  who  had  any  literature  in 
him,  Michael  Lort,  the  Hellenist.  Gray  was  not,  however, 
to  be  overlooked  any  longer,  and  on  the  27th  he  received 
a  letter  from  that  elegant  and  enlightened  statesman, 
Augustus,  Duke  of  Grafton,  offering  the  professorship  in 
terms  that  were  delicately  calculated  to  please  and  soothe 
his  pride.  He  was  told  that  he  owed  his  nomination  to 
the  whole  cabinet  council,  and  his  success  to  the  King's 
particular  admiration  of  his  genius;  the  Duke  would  not 
presume  to  think  that  the  post  could  be  of  advantage  to 
Gray,  but  trusted  that  he  might  be  induced  to  do  so  much 
credit  to  the  University.  The  poet  accepted  at  once ;  on 
the  28th  his  warrant  was  signed,  and  on  the  29th  he  was 
summoned  to  kiss  the  King's  hand.  These  were  days  in 
which  George  III.  was  still  addicted  to  polite  letters,  and 
Gray's  friends  were  anxious  to  know  the  purport  of  several 
very  gracious  speeches  which  the  King  was  observed  to 
make  to  him ;  but  Gray  was  coy,  and  would  not  tell ;  when 
he  was  pressed,  he  said,  with  great  simplicity,  that  the 
room  was  so  hot  and  he  himself  so  embarrassed,  that  he 
really  did  not  quite  know  what  it  was  the  King  did  say. 
The  charge  has  often  been  brought  against  Gray  that  ho 


180  GRAY.  |otaf 

delivered  no  lectures  from  Lis  chair  at  Cambridge.     It  is, 
of  course,  very  unfortunate  that  he  did  not,  but  it  should 
be  remembered  that  there  was  nothing  singular  in  this. 
Not  one  of  his  predecessors,  from  the  date  of  the  institu- 
tion of  the  professorship,  had  delivered  a  single  lecture ; 
Gray,  indeed,  was  succeeded  by  a  man  of  great  energy, 
John  Symonds,  who  introduced  a  variety  of  reforms  at 
Cambridge  and  amongst  others  reformed  his  own  office 
by  lecturing.     The  terms  of  the  patent  recommended  the 
professor  to  find  a   deputy  in   one  branch  of  his  duty, 
and  Gray  delegated  the  teaching  of  foreign  languages  to 
a  young  Italian,  Agostino  Isola,  of  literary  tastes,  who  sur- 
vived long  enough  to  teach  Tuscan  to  Wordsworth.     It  is 
said  that  Gray  took  the  opportunity  of  reading  the  Italian 
poets  again  with  Isola,  who  afterwards  became  an  editor 
of  Tasso.     The  granddaughter  of  Gray's  deputy  was  that 
Emma  Isola  who  became  the  adopted  child  of  Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb. .    One  is  glad  to  know  that  Gray  behaved  with 
great  liberality  to  Isola  and  also  to  the  French  teacher  at 
the  University,  Rene  La  Butte.     It  is  pleasant  to  record 
that  the  opportunity  to  follow  the  natural  dictates  of  his 
heart  in  this  and  other  instances,  he  owed  to  the  loyalty 
of  his  old  school-fellow,  Stonehewer,  who  was  the  secre- 
tary of  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  and  who  lost  no  time  in  sug- 
gesting Gray's  name  to  his  chief. 

Poor  Gray,  for  ever  pursued  by  fears  of  conflagration, 
was  actually  in  great  danger  of  being  burnt  alive  in  Jan- 
uary, 1768,  when  a  part  of  Pembroke  Hall,  including  Ma- 
son's chambers,  was  totally  destroyed  by  fire.  Two  Meth- 
odists, who  had  been  attending  a  prayer-meeting  in  the 
town,  happened  to  pass  very  late  at  night,  and  gave  the 
alarm.  Gray  was  roused  between  two  and  three  in  the 
morning  by  the  excellent  Stephen  Hempstead,  with  the  re- 


vni. J  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  181 

mark,  "  Don't  be  frightened,  sir,  but  the  college  is  all  of 
a  fire !"  No  great  harm  was  done,  but  Mason  had  to  be 
lodged  a  little  lower  down  the  street,  opposite  Peterhousc. 
After  the  event  of  the  professorship,  Gray  found  himself 
unable  to  escape  from  many  public  shows  in  which  he 
had  previously  pleaded  his  obscurity  with  success.  For  in- 
stance, in  August,  1768,  the  University  of  Cambridge  was 
honoured  by  a  visit  from  Christian  VII.,  King  of  Den- 
mark, who  had  married  the  sister  of  George  III.  To  es- 
cape from  the  festivities,  Gray  went  off  to  Newmarket, 
but  there,  as  he  says,  "  fell  into  the  jaws  of  the  King  of 
Denmark,"  was  presented  to  him  by  the  Vice-chancellor 
and  the  Orator,  and  was  brought  back  to  Cambridge  by 
them,  captive,  in  a  chaise. 

The  Duke  of  Grafton  succeeded  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
as  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Cambridge  in  1768, 
and  Gray,  moved  by  gratitude,  though  never  by  expecta- 
tion, made  an  offer  through  Stonehewer  that  he  should 
write  an  ode  to  be  performed  at  the  ceremony  of  installa- 
tion. He  seems  to  have  made  the  proposal  in  the  last 
months  of  the  year.  In  April,  1769,  he  says:  "I  do  not 
guess  what  intelligence  Stonehewer  gave  you  about  my 
employments,  but  the  worst  employment  I  have  had  has 
been  to  write  something  for  music  against  the  Duke  of 
Grafton  comes  to  Cambridge.  I  must  comfort  myself 
with  the  intention,  for  I  know  it  will  bring  abuse  enough 
on  me:  however,  it  is  done,  and  given  to  the  Vice-chancel- 
lor, and  there  is  an  end."  Norton  Nichols  records  that 
Gray  considered  the  composition  of  this  Installation  Ode 
a  sort  of  task,  and  set  about  it  with  great  reluctance.  "  It 
was  long  after  he  first  mentioned  it  to  me  before  he  could 
prevail  with  himself  to  begin  the  composition.  One 
morning,  when  I  went  to  him  as  usual  after  breakfast,  I 


182  GRAY.  [chap. 

knocked  at  his  door,  which  he  threw  open,  and  exclaimed, 
with  a  loud  voice, 

'  Hence,  avaunt !  'tis  holy  ground !' 

I  was  so  astonished  that  I  almost  feared  he  was  out  of 
his  senses ;  but  this  was  the  beginning  of  the  ode  which 
he  had  just  composed."  For  three  months  before  the 
event  the  music  professor,  J.  Randall,  of  King's,  waited 
on  Gray  regularly  to  set  the  Installation  Ode  to  music. 
It  was  Gray's  desire  to  make  this  latter  as  much  as  pos- 
sible like  the  refined  compositions  of  the  Italian  masters 
that  he  loved,  and  Randall  did  his  best  to  comply  with 
this.  Gray  took  great  pains  over  the  score,  though  in 
his  private  letters  he  spoke  with  scorn  of  Randall's  music ; 
but  when  he  came  to  the  chorus  Gray  remarked,  "  I  have 
now  done :  make  as  much  noise  as  you  please !"  Dr. 
Burney,  it  afterwards  turned  out,  was  very  much  disap- 
pointed because  he  was  not  asked  to  set  Gray's  composi- 
tion. The  Installation  Ode  was  performed  before  a  brill- 
iant assembly  on  July  1,  1769,  Gray  all  the  while  sigh- 
ing to  be  far  away  upon  the  misty  top  of  Skiddaw.  In 
the  midst  of  all  the  turmoil  and  circumstance  of  the  in- 
stallation he  wrote  in  this  way  to  Norton  Nichols,  who 
had  consulted  him  about  the  arrangement  of  his  gardens : 

"  And  so  you  have  a  garden  of  your  own,  and  you  plant  and  trans- 
plant, and  are  dirty  and  amused !  Are  you  not  ashamed  of  your- 
self ?  Why,  I  have  no  such  thing,  you  monster,  nor  ever  shall  be 
either  dirty  or  amused  as  long  as  I  live.  My  gardens  are  in  the 
window,  like  those  of  a  lodger  up  three  pairs  of  stairs  in  Petticoat 
Lane  or  Camomile  Street,  and  they  go  to  bed  regularly  under  the 
same  roof  that  I  do.  Dear,  how  charming  it  must  be  to  walk  out  in 
one's  own  garding,  and  sit  on  a  bench  in  the  open  air,  with  a  foun- 
tain, and  a  leaden  statue,  and  a  rolling  stone,  and  an  arbour  :  have  a 
care  of  sore  throats,  though,  and  the  agoe." 


viii.J  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  183 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  Installation  Ode,  though  it 
contains  some  beautiful  passages,  is  in  Gray's  healthiest 
vein.  In  it  he  returns,  with  excess,  to  that  allegorical 
style  of  his  youth  from  which  he  had  almost  escaped,  and 
we  are  told  a  great  deal  too  much  about  "  painted  Flat- 
tery "  and  "  creeping  Gain,"  and  visionary  gentlefolks  of 
that  kind.  Where  he  gets  free  from  all  this,  and  espe- 
cially in  that  strophe  when,  after  a  silence  of  more  than 
a  century,  we  hear  once  more  the  music  of  Milton's  Na- 
tivity Ode,  we  rind  him  as  charming  as  ever : 

"  Ye  brown,  o'er-arching  groves, 
That  contemplation  loves, 
Where  willowy  Camus  lingers  with  delight! 
Oft  at  the  blush  of  dawn 
I  trod  your  level  lawn, 
Oft  woo'd  the  gleam  of  Cynthia  silver-bright 
In  cloisters  dim,  far  from  the  haunts  of  Folly, 
With  Freedom  by  my  side,  and  softeyed  Melancholy." 

The  procession  of  Cambridge  worthies,  which  Hallam  has 
praised  so  highly,  is  drawn  with  great  dignity,  and  the 
compliment  conveyed  in  the  sixth  strophe,  where  the  ven- 
erable Margaret  Beaufort  bends  from  heaven  to  salute 
her  descendant,  is  very  finely  turned ;  but  we  cannot  help 
feeling  that  the  spirit  of  languor  has  not  completely  been 
excluded  from  the  poem,  and  that  if  Gray  was  not  ex- 
hausted when  he  wrote  it  he  was  at  least  greatly  fatigued. 
The  eulogy  of  the  "star  of  Brunswick"  at  the  close  of 
the  ode  is  perhaps  the  only  absurd  passage  in  the  entire 
works  of  Gray.  After  this  he  wrote  nothing  that  has 
been  preserved;  his  faculty  seems  to  have  left  him  en- 
tirely, and  if  we  deplore  his  death  within  two  years  of 
the  performance  of  the  Installation  Ode,  it  is  not  with- 
N    S  M 


184  GRAY.  [chap. 

out  a  suspicion  that  the  days  of  his  poetic  life  were 
already  numbered. 

In  1769  Gray  sold  part  of  his  estate,  consisting  of 
houses  on  the  west  side  of  Hand  Alley,  in  the  City,  for 
one  thousand  guineas,  and  an  annuity  of  eighty  pounds 
for  Mrs.  Oliffe,  who  had  a  share  in  the  estate.  "  I  have 
also  won  a  twenty-pound  prize  in  the  lottery,  and  Lord 
knows  what  arrears  I  have  in  the  Treasury,  and  I  am  a 
rich  fellow  enough,  go  to" — so  he  writes  on  the  2d  of 
January  of  that  year  to  Norton  Nichols — "and  a  fellow 
that  hath  had  losses,  and  one  that  hath  two  gowns,  and 
everything  handsome  about  him  ;  and  in  a  few  days  I 
shall  have  curtains,  are  you  advised  of  that?  ay,  and  a 
mattress  to  lie  upon." 

One  more  work  remained  for  Gray  to  do,  and  that  a 
considerable  one.  He  was  yet  to  discover  and  to  describe 
the  beauties  of  the  Cumbrian  Lakes.  In  his  youth  he 
was  the  man  who  first  looked  on  the  sublimities  of  Al- 
pine scenery  with  pleasure,  and  in  old  age  he  was  to  be 
the  pioneer  of  Wordsworth  in  opening  the  eyes  of  Eng- 
lishmen to  the  exquisite  landscape  of  Cumberland.  The 
journal  of  Gray's  Tour  in  the  Lakes  has  been  preserved 
in  full,  and  was  printed  by  Mason,  who  withheld  his 
other  itineraries.  He  started  from  York,  where  he  had 
been  staying  with  Mason,  in  July,  1769,  and  spent  the 
next  two  months  at  Old  Park.  On  the  30th  of  Septem- 
ber Gray  found  himself  on  the  winding  road  looking 
westward,  and  with  Appleby  and  the  long  reaches  of  the 
Eden  at  his  feet.  He  made  no  stay,  but  passed  on  to 
Penrith  for  the  night,  and  in  the  afternoon  walked  up 
the  Beacon  Hill,  and  saw  "  through  an  opening  in  the 
bosom  of  that  cluster  of  mountains  the  lake  of  Ulles- 
water,  with  the  craggy  tops  of  a  hundred  nameless  hills." 


viii.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  185 

Next  day  he  ascended  the  brawling  bed  of  the  Eamont, 
with  the  towers  of  Helvellyn  before  him,  until  he  reach- 
ed Dunmallert.  Gray's  description  of  his  first  sight  of 
Ulleswater,  since  sanctified  to  all  lovers  of  poetry  by 
Wordsworth's  Daffodils,  is  worth  quoting : 

"Walked  over  a  spongy  meadow  or  two,  and  began  to  mount  this 
hill  through  a  broad  and  straight  green  alley  amongst  the  trees,  and 
with  some  toil  gained  the  summit.  From  hence  saw  the  lake  open- 
ing directly  at  my  feet,  majestic  in  its  calmness,  clear  and  smooth  as 
a  blue  mirror,  with  winding  shores  and  low  points  of  land  covered 
with  green  enclosures,  white  farm-houses  looking  out  amongst  the 
trees,  and  cattle  feeding.  The  water  is  almost  everywhere  bordered 
with  cultivated  lands  gently  sloping  upwards  till  they  reach  the  feet 
of  the  mountains,  which  rise  very  rude  and  awful  with  their  broken 
tops  on  either  hand.  Directly  in  front,  at  better  than  three  miles' 
distance,  Place  Fell,  one  of  the  bravest  amongst  them,  pushes  its 
bold  broad  breast  into  the  midst  of  the  lake,  and  forces  it  to  alter 
its  course,  forming  first  a  large  bay  to  the  left,  and  then  bending  to 
the  right." 

It  would  seem  that  Wharton  had  been  with  his  friend 
during  the  first  part  of  this  excursion,  but  had  been 
forced,  by  a  violent  attack  of  asthma  which  came  on  at 
Brough,  to  return  home.  It  is  to  this  circumstance  alone 
that  we  owe  Gray's  Journal,  which  was  written  piecemeal, 
and  sent  by  post  to  Wharton,  that  he  might  share  in 
what  his  friend  was  doing.  On  the  1st  of  October  Gray 
slept  again  at  Penrith,  and  set  out  early  next  morning  for 
Keswick.  He  passed  at  noon  under  the  gleaming  crags 
of  Saddleback,  the  topmost  point  of  which  "  appeared  of 
a  sad  purple,  from  the  shadow  of  the  clouds  as  they 
sailed  slowly  by  it."  Passing  by  the  mystery  where 
Skiddaw  shrouded  "  his  double  front  amongst  Atlantic 
clouds,"  Gray  proceeded  into  Keswick,  watching  the  sun- 


186  GRAY.  [chap. 

light  reflected  from  trie  lake  on  every  facet  of  its  moun- 
tain-cup. 

It  seems  that  Gray  walked  about  everywhere  with  that 
pretty  toy,  the  Claude-Lorraine  glass,  in  his  hand,  making 
the  beautiful  forms  of  the  landscape  compose  in  its  lus- 
trous chiaroscuro.  Arranging  his  glass,  in  the  afternoon 
of  the  2d  of  October,  he  got  a  bad  fall  backwards  in  a 
Keswick  lane,  but  happily  broke  nothing  but  his  knuckles. 
Next  day,  in  company  with  the  landlord  of  the  Queen's 
Head,  he  explored  the  wonders  of  Borrowdale,  the  scene 
of  Wordsworth's  wild  poem  of  Yew-trees.  Just  before 
entering  the  valley  he  pauses  to  make  a  little  vignette  of 
the  scene  for  Wharton's  benefit : 

"  Our  path  here  tends  to  the  left,  and  the  ground  gently  rising 
and  covered  with  a  glade  of  scattering  tree3  and  bushes  on  the  very 
margin  of  the  water,  opens  both  ways  the  most  delicious  view  that 
my  eyes  ever  beheld.  Behind  you  are  the  magnificent  heights  of 
Walla  Crag;  opposite  lie  the  thick  hanging  woods  of  Lord  Egre- 
rnont,  and  Newland  Valley,  with  green  and  smiling  fields  embosomed 
in  the  dark  cliffs ;  to  the  left  the  jaws  of  Borrowdale,  with  that  tur- 
bulent chaos  of  mountain  behind  mountain  rolled  in  confusion ;  be- 
neath you,  and  stretching  far  away  to  the  right,  the  shining  purity  of 
the  lake,  just  ruffled  with  the  breeze,  enough  to  show  it  is  alive,  re- 
flecting rocks,  woods,  fields,  and  inverted  tops  of  mountains,  with  the 
white  buildings  of  Keswick,  Crossthwaite  church,  and  Skiddaw  for  a 
background  at  a  distance.    Oh,  Doctor,  I  never  wished  more  for  you." 

All  this  is  much  superior  in  graphic  power  to  what  the 
Paul  Sandbys  and  Richard  Wilsons  could  at  that  time  at- 
tain to  in  the  art  of  painting.  Their  best  landscapes,  with 
their  sobriety  and  conscious  artificiality,  |heir  fine  tone  and 
studious  repression  of  reality,  are  more  allied  to  those  ele- 
gant and  conventional  descriptions  of  the  picturesque  by 
which  William  Gilpin   made  himself  so  popular  twenty 


viii. J  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  187 

years  later.  Even  Smith  of  Derby,  whose  engravings  of 
Cumberland  scenes  had  attracted  notice,  was  tamely  topo- 
graphical in  his  treatment  of  them.  Gray  gives  us  some- 
thing more  modern,  yet  no  less  exact,  and  reminds  us  more 
of  the  early  landscapes  of  Turner,  with  their  unaffected  ren- 
dering of  nature.  Southey's  early  letters  from  the  Lakes, 
written  nearly  a  generation  later  than  Gray's,  though  more 
developed  in  romantic  expression,  are  not  one  whit  truer 
or  more  graphic. 

Lodore  seems  to  have  been  even  in  those  days  a  sight 
to  which  visitors  were  taken ;  Gray  gives  a  striking  ac- 
count of  it,  but  confesses  that  the  crags  of  Gowder  were, 
to  his  mind,  far  more  impressive  than  this  slender  cascade. 
The  piles  of  shattered  rock  that  hung  above  the  pass  of 
Gowder  gave  him  a  sense  of  danger  as  well  as  of  sublimi- 
ty, and  reminded  him  of  the  Alps.  He  glanced  at  the  bal- 
anced crags  and  hurried  on,  whispering  to  himself,  uNon 
ragionam  di  lor,  ma  guarda,  e  passa  /"  The  weather  was 
most  propitious ;  if  anything,  too  brilliantly  hot.  It  had 
suggested  itself  to  Gray  that  in  such  clear  weather  and  un- 
der such  a  radiant  sky  he  ought  to  ascend  Skiddaw,  but  his 
laziness  got  the  better  of  him,  and  he  judged  himself  better 
employed  in  sauntering  along  the  shore  of  Derwentwater: 

"  In  the  evening  walked  alone  down  to  the  Lake  by  the  side  of 
Crow  Park  after  sunset,  and  saw  the  solemn  colouring  of  light  draw 
on,  the  last  gleam  of  sunshine  fading  away  on  the  hill-tops,  the  deep 
serene  of  the  waters,  and  the  long  shadows  of  the  mountains  thrown 
across  them,  till  they  nearly  touched  the  hithermost  shore.  At  dis- 
tance heard  the  murmur  of  many  water-falls,  not  audible  in  the  day- 
time. Wished  for  the  Moon,  but  she  was  dark  to  me  and  silent,  hid 
in  her  vacant  interlunar  cave." 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  noticed  that  Gray  has  the  ac- 
cent of  Obcrmann  in  such  passages  as  these ;  it  is  the  full 


188  GRAY.  [chap. 

tone  of  the  romantic  solitary  without  any  of  the  hysterical 
over-gorgeousness  which  has  ruined  modern  description 
of  landscape.  The  4th  of  October  was  a  day  of  rest ;  the 
traveller  contented  himself  with  watching  a  procession  of 
red  clouds  come  marching  up  the  eastern  hills,  and  with 
gazing  across  the  water-fall  into  the  gorge  of  Borrowdalc. 
On  the  5th  he  walked  down  the  Derwent  to  Bassenthwaite 
Water,  and  skirmished  a  little  around  the  flanks  of  Skid- 
daw  ;  on  the  6th  he  drove  along  the  eastern  shore  of  Bas- 
senthwaite towards  Cockermouth,  but  did  not  reach  that 
town,  and  returned  to  Keswick.  The  next  day,  the  weath- 
er having  suddenly  become  chilly  and  autumnal,  Gray  made 
no  excursions,  but  botanized  along  the  borders  of  Derwent- 
water,  with  the  perfume  of  the  wild  myrtle  in  his  nostrils. 
A  little  touch  in  writing  to  Wharton  of  the  weather  shows 
us  the  neat  and  fastidious  side  of  Gray's  character.  "  The 
soil  is  so  thin  and  light,"  he  says  of  the  neighbourhood  of 
Keswick,  "  that  no  day  has  passed  in  which  I  could  not 
walk  out  with  ease,  and  you  know  I  am  no  lover  of  dirt." 
On  the  8th  he  drove  out  of  Keswick  along  the  Ambleside 
road;  the  wind  was  easterly  and  the  sky  gray;  but  just  as 
they  left  the  valley,  the  sun  broke  out,  and  bathed  the 
lakes  and  mountain-sides  with  such  a  wonderful  morning 
glory  that  Gray  almost  made  up  his  mind  to  go  back 
again.  He  was  particularly  fascinated  with  the  "  clear 
obscure  "  of  Thirlmere,  shaded  by  the  spurs  of  Helvellyn ; 
and  entering  Westmoreland,  descended  into  what  Words- 
worth was  to  make  classic  ground  thirty  years  later,  Gras- 

mere — 

"  Its  crags,  its  woody  steeps,  its  lakes, 

Its  one  green  island,  and  its  winding  shores, 
The  multitude  of  little  rocky  hills, 
Its  church,  and  cottages  of  mountain  stone, 
Clustered  like  stars." 


vm.]  ENGLISH  TRAVELS.  189 

This  fragment   of   Wordsworth   may   be   confronted   by 
Gray's  description  of  the  same  scene : 

"Just  beyond  Helen  Crag  opens  one  of  the  sweetest  landscapes 
that  art  ever  attempted  to  imitate.  The  bosom  of  the  mountains, 
spreading  here  into  a  broad  basin,  discovers  in  the  midst  Grasmere 
Water ;  its  margin  is  hollowed  into  small  bays  with  bold  eminences, 
some  of  them  rocks,  some  of  soft  turf  that  half  conceal  and  vary  the 
figure  of  the  little  lake  they  command.  From  the  shore  a  low  prom- 
ontory pushes  itself  far  into  the  water,  and  on  it  stands  a  white  vil- 
lage, with  the  parish  church  rising  in  the  midst  of  it ;  hanging  en- 
closures, corn-fields,  and  meadows  green  as  an  emerald,  with  their 
trees,  hedges,  and  cattle,  fill  up  the  whole  space  from  the  edge  of  the 
water.  Just  opposite  to  you  is  a  large  farm-house  at  the  bottom  of 
a  steep  smooth  lawn  embosomed  in  old  woods,  which  climb  half-way 
up  the  mountain -side,  and  discover  above  them  a  broken  line  of 
crags,  that  crown  the  scene.  Not  a  single  red  tile,  no  flaring  gentle- 
man's house,  or  garden-walls,  break  in  upon  the  repose  of  this  little 
unsuspected  paradise ;  but  all  is  peace,  rusticity,  and  happy  poverty 
in  its  neatest  and  most  becoming  attire." 

Passing  from  Grasmere,  he  drove  through  Rydal,  not 
without  a  reference  to  the  "large,  old-fashioned  fabric, 
now  a  farm-house,"  which  Wordsworth  was  to  buy  in 
1813,  and  was  to  immortalize  with  his  memory.  I  have 
not  been  able  to  find  any  word  in  the  writings  of  the 
younger  poet  to  show  his  consciousness  of  the  fact  that 
Gray's  eye  was  attracted  to  the  situation  of  Rydal  Mount 
exactly  six  months  before  he  himself  saw  the  light  at 
Cockermouth.  At  Ambleside,  then  quite  unprepared  for 
the  accommodation  of  strangers,  Gray  could  find  no  de- 
cent bed,  and  so  went  on  to  Kendal,  for  the  first  few  miles 
skirting  the  broad  waters  of  Windermere,  magnificent  in 
the  soft  light  of  afternoon.  He  spent  two  nights  at  Ken- 
dal, drove  round  Morecambe  Bay,  and  slept  at  Lancaster 
on  the  10th;  reached  Settle,  under  the  "long  black  cloud 


190  GRAY.  [chap.tiil 

of  Ingleborough,"  on  the  12th;  and  we  find  him  still  wan- 
dering amongst  the  wild  western  moors  of  Yorkshire  when 
the  journal  abruptly  closes  on  the  15th  of  October.  On 
the  18th  he  was  once  more  at  Aston  with  Mason,  and  he 
returned  to  Cambridge  on  the  2 2d,  after  a  holiday  of 
rather  more  than  three  months. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

BONSTETTEN. DEATH. 

Gray  became,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  an  object  of 
some  curiosity  at  Cambridge.  He  was  difficult  of  access 
except  to  his  personal  friends.  It  was  the  general  habit 
to  dine  in  college  at  noon,  so  that  the  students  might 
flock,  without  danger  of  indigestion,  to  the  philosophical 
disputations  at  two  o'clock.  The  Fellows  dined  together 
in  the  Parlour,  or  the  "  Combination,"  as  the  common- 
room  came  to  be  called ;  and  even  when  they  dined  in 
hall  they  were  accustomed  to  meet,  in  the  course  of  the 
morning,  over  a  seed-cake  and  a  bottle  of  sherry-sack. 
But  Gray  kept  aloof  from  these  convivialities,  at  which, 
indeed,  as  not  being  a  Fellow,  he  was  not  obliged  to  be 
present;  and  his  dinner  was  served  to  him,  by  his  man, 
in  his  own  rooms.  In  the  same  way,  when  he  was  in 
town,  at  his  lodgings  in  Jermyn  Street,  his  meals  were 
brought  in  to  him  from  an  eating-house  round  the  corner. 
Almost  the  only  time  at  which  strangers  could  be  sure  of 
seeing  him  was  when  he  went  to  the  Rainbow  coffee- 
house, at  Cambridge,  to  order  his  books  from  the  circu- 
lating library.  The  registers  were  kept  by  the  woman  at 
the  bar,  and  no  book  was  bought  unless  the  requisition  for 
it  was  signed  by  four  subscribers.  Towards  the  end  of 
Gray's  life  literary  tuft-hunters  used  to  contend  for  the 
0* 


132  GRAY.  [chap. 

honour  of  supporting  Gray's  requests  for  books.  There 
was  in  particular  a  Mr.  Pigott  who  desired  to  be  thought 
the  friend  of  the  poet,  and  who  went  so  far  as  to  erase  the 
next  subscriber's  name,  and  place  his  own  underneath  the 
neat  "  T.  Gray."  It  happened  that  Gray  objected  very 
much  to  this  particular  gentleman,  and  he  remarked  one 
day  to  his  friend  Mr.  Sparrow,  "  That  man's  name  wher- 
ever I  go, piget,  he  PigotCs  me!"  It  is  said  that  when 
Gray  emerged  from  his  chambers,  graduates  would  hastily 
leave  their  dinners  to  look  at  him,  but  we  may  doubt, 
with  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  whether  this  is  within  the  bounds 
of  probability ;  Mathias,  however,  who  would  certainly  have 
left  his  dinner,  was  a  whole  year  at  Cambridge  without 
being  able  to  set  eyes  on  Gray  once.  Lord  St.  Helen's 
told  Rogers  that  when  he  was  at  St.  John's,  in  1770,  he 
called  on  Gray  with  a  letter  of  introduction,  and  that 
Gray  returned  the  call,  which  was  thought  so  extraordi- 
nary, that  a  considerable  number  of  college  men  assembled 
in  the  quadrangle  to  see  him  pass,  and  all  removed  their 
caps  when  he  went  by.  He  brought  three  young  dons 
with  him,  and  the  procession  walked  in  Indian  file ;  his 
companions  .seem  to  have  attended  in  silence,  and  to  have 
expressed  dismay  on  their  countenances  when  Lord  St. 
Helen's  frankly  asked  the  poet  what  he  thought  of  Gar- 
rick's  Jubilee  Ode — which  was  just  published.  Gray 
replied  that  he  was  easily  pleased. 

Unaffected  to  the  extreme  with  his  particular  friends, 
Gray  seems  to  have  adopted  with  strangers  whom  he  did 
not  like  a  supercilious  air,  and  a  tone  of  great  languor 
and  hauteur.  Cole,  who  did  not  appreciate  him,  speaks, 
in  an  unpublished  note,  of  his  "disgusting  effeminacy," 
by  which  he  means  what  we  call  affectation.  Mason 
says  that  he  used  this  manner  as  a  means  of  offence  and 


ix.]  BONSTETTEN.  193 

defence  towards  persons  whom  he  disliked.  Here  is 
a  picture  of  him  the  year  before  he  died :  "  Mr.  Gray's 
singular  niceness  in  the  choice  of  his  acquaintance  makes 
him  appear  fastidious  in  a  great  degree  to  all  who  are 
not  acquainted  with  his  manner.  He  is  of  a  fastidious 
and  recluse  distance  of  carriage,  rather  averse  to  all  so- 
ciability, but  of  the  graver  turn,  nice  and  elegant  in  his 
person,  dress,  and  behaviour,  even  to  a  degree  of  finicality 
and  effeminacy."  This  conception  of  him  as  an  affected 
and  effeminate  little  personage  was  widely  current  during 
his  own  lifetime.  Mr.  Penneck,  the  Superintendent  of 
the  Museum  Reading  Room,  had  a  friend  who  travelled 
one  day  in  the  Windsor  stage  with  a  small  gentleman 
to  whom,  on  passing  Kensington  Church-yard,  he  began 
to  quote  with  great  fervour  some  stanzas  of  the  Elegy  ; 
adding  how  extraordinary  it  was  that  a  poet  of  such 
genius  and  manly  vigour  of  mind  should  be  a  delicate, 
timid,  effeminate  character — "in  fact,  sir,"  he  continued, 
"that  Mr.  Gray,  who  wrote  those  noble  verses,  should  be 
a  puny  insect  shivering  at  a  breeze."  The  other  gentle- 
man assented,  and  they  passed  to  general  topics,  on  which 
he  proved  himself  to  be  so  well-informed,  entertaining, 
and  vivacious,  that  Penneck's  friend  was  enchanted.  On 
leaving  the  coach  he  fell  into  an  enthusiastic  description 
of  his  fellow-traveller  to  the  friend  who  met  him,  and 
wouud  up  by  saying,  "  Ah !  here  he  is,  returning  to  the 
coach!  Who  can  he  be?"  "Oh,  that  is  Mr.  Gray,  the 
poet !" 

Gray  could  be  talkative  enough  in  general  society,  if  he 
found  the  company  sympathetic.  Walpole  says  that  he 
resembled  Hume  as  a  talker,  but  was  much  better  com- 
pany. On  one  of  his  visits  to  Norton  Nichols  at  Blundes- 
ton  he  found  two  old  relatives  of  his  host,  people  of  the 


194  GRAY.  [chap. 

most  commonplace  type,  already  installed,  and  at  first  he 
seemed  to  consider  it  impossible  to  reconcile  himself  to 
their  presence.  But  noticing  that  Nichols  was  grieved  at 
this,  he  immediately  changed  his  manner,  and  made  him- 
self so  agreeable  to  them  both  that  the  old  people  talked 
of  him  with  pleasure  as  long  as  they  lived.  He  would 
always  interest  himself  in  any  reference  to  farming,  or  to 
the  condition  of  the  crops,  which  bore  upon  his  botanical 
pursuits;  one  of  his  daily  occupations,  in  his  healthier 
years,  being  the  construction  of  a  botanical  calendar.  One 
of  his  finest  sayings  was :  "  To  be  employed  is  to  be  hap- 
py ;"  and  his  great  personal  aim  in  life  seems  to  have  been 
to  be  constantly  employed,  without  fatigue,  so  as  to  be 
able  to  stem  the  tide  of  constitutional  low  spirits.  The 
presence  of  his  most  intimate  friends,  such  as  Wharton 
and  Nichols,  had  so  magnetic  an  influence  upon  him,  that 
their  memory  of  him  was  almost  uniformly  bright  and 
vivid.  Those  whom  he  loved  less,  knew  how  dejected 
and  silent  he  could  be  for  hours  and  hours.  Gibbon  re- 
gretted the  pertinacity  with  which  Gray  plunged  into 
merely  acquisitive  and  scholastic  study ;  the  truth  prob- 
ably is,  that  he  had  not  the  courage  to  indulge  in  reverie, 
nor  the  physical  health  to  be  at  rest. 

The  person,  however,  who  has  preserved  the  most  exact 
account  of  Gray's  manner  of  life  during  the  last  months 
of  his  career  is  Bonstetten.  In  November,  1769,  Norton 
Nichols,  being  at  Bath,  met  in  the  Pump  Room  there, 
amongst  the  mob  of  fashionable  people,  a  handsome  young 
Swiss  gentleman  of  four-and-twenty,  named  Charles  Victor 
de  Bonstetten.  He  was  the  only  son  of  the  Treasurer  of 
Berne,  and  belonged  to  one  of  the  six  leading  families  of 
the  country.  He  lived  at  Nyon,  had  been  educated  at 
Lausanne,  and  was  now  in  England,  desiring  to  study  our 


ix.]  BONSTETTEN.  195 

language  and  literature,  but  having  hitherto  fallen  more 
amongst  fashionable  people  than  people  of  taste.  He  was 
very  enthusiastic,  romantic,  and  good-looking,  very  sweet 
and  winning  in  manner,  full  of  wit  and  spirit,  and,  when 
he  chose  to  exert  himself,  quite  irresistible.  He  had 
brought  an  introduction  to  Pitt,  but,  after  receiving  some 
courtesies,  had  slipped  away  into  the  country,  and  Nich- 
ols found  him  turning  the  heads  of  all  the  young  ladies 
at  Bath.  Bonstetten  attached  himself  very  warmly  to 
Nichols,  and  was  persuaded  by  the  latter  to  go  to  Cam- 
bridge to  attend  lectures.  That  Nichols  thoroughly  ad- 
mired him  is  certain  from  the  very  earnest  letter  of  in- 
troduction which  he  sent  with  him  to  Gray  on  the  27th 
of  November,  1769. 

The  ebullient  young  Swiss  conquered  the  shy  and  soli- 
tary poet  at  sight.  "  My  gaiety,  my  love  for  English 
poetry,  appeared  to  have  subdued  him  " — the  word  Bon- 
stetten uses  is  "  subjugue  " — "  and  the  difference  in  age 
between  us  seemed  to  disappear  at  once."  Gray  found 
him  a  lodging  close  to  Pembroke  Hall,  at  a  coffee-house, 
and  at  once  set  himself  to  plan  out  for  Bonstetten  a  course 
of  studies.  On  the  6th  of  January,  1770,  Bonstetten  wrote 
to  Norton  Nichols:  "I  am  in  a  hurry  from  morning  till 
night.  At  eight  o'clock  I  am  roused  by  a  young  square- 
cap,  with  whom  I  follow  Satan  through  chaos  and  night. 
. . .  We  finish  our  travels  in  a  copious  breakfast  of  muf- 
fins and  tea.  Then  appear  Shakspeare  and  old  Linnseus, 
struggling  together  as  two  ghosts  would  do  for  a  damned 
soul.  Sometimes  the  one  gets  the  better,  sometimes  the 
other.  Mr.  Gray,  whose  acquaintance  is  my  greatest  debt 
to  you,  is  so  good  as  to  show  me  Macbeth,  and  all  witches, 
beldames,  ghosts,  and  spirits,  whose  language  I  never  could 
have  understood  without  his  interpretation.      I  am   now 


196  GRAY.  [chap. 

endeavouring  to  dress  all  these  people  in  a  French  dress, 
which  is  a  very  hard  labour."  In  enclosing  this  letter  to 
Nichols  Gray  adds  as  a  postscript : 

"  I  never  saw  such  a  boy ;  our  breed  is  not  made  on  this  model. 
He  is  busy  from  morning  to  night,  has  no  other  amusement  than 
that  of  changing  one  study  for  another,  likes  nobody  that  he  see3 
here,  and  yet  wishes  to  stay  longer,  though  he  has  passed  a  whole 
fortnight  with  us  already.  His  letter  has  had  no  correction  what- 
ever, and  is  prettier  by  half  than  English." 

For  more  than  ten  weeks  after  the  date  of  this  letter 
Bonstetten  remained  in  his  lodgings  at  Cambridge,  in 
daily  and  unbroken  intercourse  with  Gray.  The  reminis- 
cences of  the  young  Swiss  gentleman  are  extremely  in- 
teresting, though  doubtless  they  require  to  be  accepted 
with  a  certain  reservation.  There  is,  however,  the  stamp 
of  truth  about  his  statement  that  the  poetical  genius  of 
Gray  was  by  this  time  so  completely  extinguished  that 
the  very  mention  of  his  poems  was  distasteful  to  him. 
He  would  not  permit  Bonstetten  to  talk  to  him  about 
them,  and  when  the  young  man  quoted  some  of  his  lines 
Gray  preserved  an  obstinate  silence  like  a  sullen  child. 
Sometimes  Bonstetten  said,  "Will  you  not  answer  me?" 
But  no  word  would  proceed  from  the  shut  lips.  Yet  this 
was  during  the  time  when,  on  all  subjects  but  himself, 
Gray  was  conversing  with  Bonstetten  on  terms  of  the 
most  affectionate  intimacy.  For  three  months  the  young 
Swiss,  despising  all  other  society  to  be  found  at  Cam- 
bridge, spent  every  evening  with  Gray,  arriving  at  five 
o'clock,  and  lingering  till  midnight.  They  read  together 
Shakspeare,  Milton,  Dryden,  and  the  other  great  English 
classics,  until  their  study  would  slip  into  sympathetic  con- 
versation, in  which  the  last  word  was  never  spoken.     Bon- 


ix.]  BONSTETTEN.  197 

stetten  poured  out  his  confidences  to  the  old  poet — all  his 
life,  all  his  hopes,  all  the  aspirations  and  enthusiasms  of 
his  youth — and  Gray  received  it  all  with  profound  interest 
and  sympathy,  but  never  with  the  least  reciprocity.  To 
the  last  his  own  life's  history  was  a  closed  book  to  Bon- 
stetten.  Never  once  did  he  speak  of  himself.  Between 
the  present  and  past  there  seemed  to  be  a  great  gulf  fixed, 
and  when  the  warm-hearted  young  man  approached  the 
subject  he  was  always  baffled.  He  remarks  that  there 
was  a  complete  discord  between  Gray's  humorous  intellect 
and  ardent  imagination  on  the  one  side,  and  what  he  calls 
a  "  misere  de  coeur"  on  the  other.  Bonstetten  thought 
that  this  was  owing  to  a  suppressed  sensibility,  to  the  fact 

that  Gray  never 

"  Anywhere  in  the  sun  or  rain 
Had  loved  or  been  beloved  again," 

and  that  he  felt  his  heart  to  be  frozen  at  last  under  what 
Bonstetten  calls  the  Arctic  Pole  of  Cambridge. 

This  final  friendship  of  his  life  troubled  the  poet  strange- 
ly. He  could  not  get  over  the  wonder  of  Bonstetten's  ar- 
dour and  vitality — "  our  breed  is  not  made  on  this  model." 
His  letters  to  Norton  Nichols  are  like  the  letters  of  an 
anxious  parent.  "He  gives  me,"  he  says,  on  the  20th  of 
March,  1770,  "too  much  pleasure,  and  at  least  an  equal 
share  of  inquietude.  You  do  not  understand  him  as  well 
as  I  do,  but  I  leave  my  meaning  imperfect,  till  we  meet. 
I  have  never  met  with  so  extraordinary  a  person.  God 
bless  him !  I  am  unable  to  talk  to  you  about  anything 
else,  I  think."  Late  in  the  month  of  March,  Bonstetten 
tore  himself  away  from  Cambridge ;  his  father  had  long 
been  insisting  that  he  must  return  to  Nyon.  Gray  went 
up  to  London  with  him,  showed  him  some  of  the  sights, 
amongst  others  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  who  came  puffing  down 


198  GRAY.  [chap. 

the  Strand,  unconscious  of  the  two  strangers  who  paused 
on  their  way  to  observe  him.  "  Look,  look,  Bonstetten  !" 
said  Gray,  "the  Great  Bear!  There  goes  Ursa  Major!" 
On  the  23d  of  March  Gray  lent  him  201.  and  packed  his 
friend  into  the  Dover  machine  at  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  returning  very  sadly  to  Cambridge,  whence  he 
wrote  to  Nichols :  "  Here  am  I  again  to  pass  my  solitary 
evenings,  which  hung  much  lighter  on  my  hands  before  I 
knew  him.  This  is  your  fault !  Pray  let  the  next  you 
send  me  be  halt  and  blind,  dull,  unapprehensive,  and  wrong- 
headed.  For  this — as  Lady  Constance  says — was  ever  such 
a  gracious  creature  born !  and  yet — but  no  matter !  .  .  . 
This  place  never  appeared  so  horrible  to  me  as  it  does 
now.  Could  you  not  come  for  a  week  or  a  fortnight? 
It  would  be  sunshine  to  me  in  a  dark  night." 

Bonstetten  had  departed  with  every  vow  and  circum- 
stance of  friendship,  and  had  obliged  Gray  to  promise  that 
he  would  visit  him  the  next  summer  in  Switzerland.  He 
wrote  to  Gray  from  Abbeville,  and  then  there  fell  upon  his 
correspondence  one  of  those  silences  so  easy  to  the  volatile 
and  youthful.  Gray  in  the  mean  while  was  possessed  by  a 
weak  restlessness  of  mind  that  made  him  almost  ill,  and 
early  in  April,  since  Nichols  could  not  come  to  Cam- 
bridge, he  himself  hastened  to  Blundeston,  spending  a  few 
days  with  Palgrave  ("  Old  Pa  ")  on  the  way.  He  made 
one  excuse  after  another  for  avoiding  Cambridge,  to  which 
he  did  not  return,  except  for  a  week  or  two,  until  the  end 
of  the  year.  He  agreed  with  Norton  Nichols  that  they 
should  go  together  to  Switzerland  in  the  summer  of  1771, 
but  entreated  him  not  to  vex  him  by  referring  to  this  in 
any  way  till  the  time  came  for  starting.  By-and-by  let- 
ters came  from  Bonstetten,  with  "  bad  excuses  for  not 
writing  oftener,"  and  in  May  Gray  was  happier,  travelling 


ix.]  BONSTETTEN.  199 

to  Aston  to  be  with  Mason,  driving  along  the  roads,  with 
trees  blooming  and  nightingales  singing  all  around  him. 

His  only  literary  exercise  during  this  year  1770  seems  to 
have  been  filling  an  interleaved  copy  of  the  works  of  Lin- 
naeus with  notes.  For  the  last  eight  or  nine  years  natural 
history  had  been  his  favourite  study ;  he  said  that  it  was 
a  singular  felicity  to  him  to  be  engaged  in  this  pursuit, 
and  it  often  took  him  out  into  the  fields  when  nothing 
else  would.  He  interleaved  a  copy  of  Hudson's  Flora 
Anglica,  and  filled  it  with  notes;  and  was  on  a  level  with 
all  that  had  been  done  up  to  his  time  in  zoology  and 
botany.  Some  of  his  notes  and  observations  were  after- 
wards made  use  of  by  Pennant,  with  warm  acknowledg- 
ment. He  returned  from  Aston  towards  the  end  of  June, 
and  prepared  at  once  to  start  with  Norton  Nichols  for  a 
summer  tour.  He  so  hated  Cambridge  that  he  would  not 
start  thence,  but  directed  Nichols  to  meet  him  at  the  sign 
of  the  Wheat  Sheaf,  five  miles  beyond  Huntingdon,  about 
the  3d  of  July.  Unfortunately,  there  exists  no  journal  to 
commemorate  this,  the  last  of  Gray's  tours,  which  seems  to 
have  occupied  more  than  two  months.  The  friends  drove 
across  the  midland  counties  into  Worcestershire,  descended 
the  Severn  to  Gloucester,  and  then  made  their  way  to 
Malvern  Wells,  where  they  stayed  a  week,  because  Nichols 
found  some  of  his  acquaintance  there.  Gray  must  have 
been  particularly  well,  for  he  ascended  the  Herefordshire 
Beacon,  and  enjoyed  the  unrivalled  view  from  its  summit. 
He  was  much  vexed,  however,  with  the  fashionable  society 
at  the  long  table  of  the  inn,  and  maintained  silence  at 
dinner.  When  Nichols  gently  rallied  him  on  this  he  said 
that  long  retirement  in  the  University  had  destroyed 
the  versatility   of  his  mind.     At  Malvern  he  received  a 

copy    of   Goldsmith's   Deserted    Village,  which    had   just 
O  37 


200  GRAY.  [chap. 

been  published ;  he  asked  Norton  Nichols  to  read  it  aloud 
to  him,  listened  to  it  with  fixed  attention,  and  exclaimed 
before  they   had  proceeded  far,  "This  man  is  a  poet." 
From  Malvern  they  went  on  to  Ross,  in  Monmouthshire, 
and  descended  the  Wye  to  Chepstow,  a  distance  of  forty 
miles,  in  a  boat,  "  surrounded,"  says  Gray,  "  with  ever-new 
delights."      From  this  point  they  went  to  Abergavenny 
and  South  Wales,  returning  by  Oxford,  where  they  spent 
two  agreeable  days.     During  this  tour  Gray  turned  aside 
to  visit  Leasowes,  where  Shenstone  had  lived  and  died  in 
1763.      Gray   had    never   admired    Shenstone's    artificial 
grace,  and  had  been  vexed  by  some  allusions  in  his  post- 
humously published  letters,  and  it  was  probably  more  to 
see  the  famous  "  Arcadian  greens  rural "  than  to  do  hom- 
age to  a  poetic  memory  that  he  loitered  at  Halesowen. 
He  returned  in  a  very  fair  state  of  health,  as  was  custom- 
ary after  his  summer  holidays ;  but  the  good  effects,  un- 
fortunately, passed  away  unusually  soon.     He  had  a  fever- 
ish attack  in  September,  but  cured  it  with  sage-tea,  his 
favourite  nostrum.     Nichols  came  up  to  town  to  see  him, 
and  travelled  with  him  as  far  as  Cambridge ;  but  Gray's 
now  invincible  dislike  to  this  place  seems  to  have  made 
him  really  ill,  and  for  the  next  two  months  he  only  went 
outside  the  walls  of  the  college  once.    His  aunt,  Mrs.  Oliffe, 
now  ninety  years  of  age,  had  come  up  to  Cambridge,  and 
appears  to  have  lodged  close  to  Gray,  inside  Pembroke 
Hall,  where  he  was  now  allowed  to  do  whatever  he  chose. 
She  was  helplessly  bedridden,  but  as  intractable  a  daugh- 
ter of  the  Dragon  of  Wantley  as  ever.     The  other  Pem- 
broke nonogenarian,  Dr.  Roger  Long,  died  on  the  16th  of 
December,  1770,  and  Gray's  friend,  James  Brown,  succeed- 
ed him  in  the  Mastership  without  any  contention. 

Early  in  1771  Mrs.  Oliffe  died,  leaving  her  entire  fort- 


ix.]  BONSTETTEN.  201 

une,  such  as  it  was,  to  Gray,  and  none  of  it  to  her  nieces, 
the  Antrobuses,  who  had  nursed  her  in  her  illness.  These 
women  had  been  brought  to  Cambridge  by  Gray,  and  had 
been  so  comfortably  settled  by  him  in  situations,  that  in 
one  of  his  letters  he  playfully  dreads  that  all  his  friends 
will  shudder  at  the  name  of  Antrobus.  All  through  this 
spring  Gray  seems  to  have  been  gradually  sinking  in 
strength  and  spirits,  though  none  of  his  friends  appear 
to  have  been  alarmed  about  it.  To  Norton  Nichols's  en- 
treaties that  he  would  go  to  visit  Bonstetten  with  him,  as 
to  the  young  Swiss  gentleman's  own  invitations,  he  an- 
swered with  a  sad  intimation  that  his  health  was  not 
equal  to  so  much  exertion. 

Nichols  came  up  to  town  to  say  farewell  to  him  in  the 
middle  of  June,  having  at  last  been  persuaded  that  it  was 
useless  to  wait  for  Gray.  The  poet  was  in  his  old  rooms 
in  Jermyn  Street,  and  there  they  parted  for  the  last  time. 
Before  Nichols  took  leave  of  him  Gray  said,  very  ear- 
nestly, "  I  have  one  thing  to  beg  of  you,  which  you  must 
not  refuse."  Nichols  replied,  "You  know  you  have  only 
to  command ;  what  is  it?"  "  Do  not  go  to  visit  Voltaire; 
no  one  knows  the  mischief  that  man  will  do."  Nichols 
said,  "  Certainly,  I  will  not ;  but  what  could  a  visit  from 
me  signify?"  "Every  tribute  to  such  a  man  signifies." 
A  little  before  this  Gray  had  rejected  polite  overtures 
from  Voltaire,  who  was  a  great  admirer  of  the  Elegy ;  but 
it  was  not  that  he  was  dead  to  the  charms  of  the  great 
Frenchman.  He  paid  a  full  tribute  of  admiration  to  his 
genius,  delighted  in  his  wit,  enjoyed  his  histories,  and  re- 
garded his  tragedies  as  next  in  rank  to  those  of  Shak- 
speare  ;  but  he  hated  him,  as  he  hated  Hume,  because,  as 
he  said,  he  thought  him  an  enemy  to  religion.  He  tried 
to  persuade  himself  that  Beattie  had  mastered  Voltaire  in 


202  GRAY.  [chap. 

argument.  Gray  had  a  similar  dislike  to  Shaftesbury,  and 
was,  throughout  his  career,  though  in  a  very  unassuming 
way,  a  sincere  believer  in  Christianity.  We  find  him  ex- 
horting Dr.  Wharton  not  to  omit  the  use  of  family  prayer, 
and  this  although  he  had  a  horror  of  anything  like  "  Meth- 
odism "  or  religious  display. 

Gray's  last  letter  to  Bonstetten  may  be  given  as  an  ex- 
ample of  his  correspondence  with  that  gentleman,  as  long 
after  preserved  and  published  by  Miss  Plumptre  : 

"I  am  returned,  my  dear  Bonstetten,  from  the  little  journey  I 
made  into  Suffolk,  without  answering  the  end  proposed.  The  thought 
that  you  might  have  been  with  me  there  has  embittered  all  my 
hours.  Your  letter  has  made  me  happy,  as  happy  as  so  gloomy,  so 
solitary  a  being  as  I  am,  is  capable  of  being  made.  I  know,  and 
have  too  often  felt,  the  disadvantages  I  lay  myself  under ;  how 
much  I  hurt  the  little  interest  I  have  in  you  by  this  air  of  sadness 
so  contrary  to  your  nature  and  present  enjoyments :  but  sure  you 
will  forgive,  though  you  cannot  sympathise  with  me.  It  is  impossi- 
ble with  me  to  dissemble  with  you ;  such  as  I  am  I  expose  my 
heart  to  your  view,  nor  wish  to  conceal  a  single  thought  from  your 
penetrating  eyes.  All  that  you  say  to  me,  especially  on  the  subject 
of  Switzerland,  is  infinitely  acceptable.  It  feels  too  pleasing  ever  to 
be  fulfilled,  and  as  often  as  I  read  over  your  truly  kind  letter,  writ- 
ten long  since  from  London,  I  stop  at  these  words :  '  La  mort  qui 
peut  glacer  nos  bras  avant  qu'ils  soient  entrelaces.' " 

He  made  a  struggle  to  release  himself  from  this  atra- 
bilious mood.  He  reflected  on  the  business  which  he  had 
so  long  neglected,  and  determined  to  try  again  to  find  en- 
ergy to  lecture.  He  drew  up  three  schemes  for  regulating 
the  studies  of  private  pupils,  and  laid  them  before  the 
Duke  of  Grafton.  But  these  plans,  as  was  usual  with 
Gray,  never  came  to  execution,  and  when  he  was  at  Aston 
in  1770  he  told  Mason  that  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  resign  the  professorship,  since  it 


ii]  DEATH.  203 

was  out  of  his  power  to  do  any  real  service  in  it.  Mason 
strongly  dissuaded  him  from  such  a  step,  and  encouraged 
him  to  think  that  even  yet  he  would  be  able  to  make  a 
beginning  of  his  lectures.  The  exordium  of  his  proposed 
inauguration  speech  was  all  that  was  found  at  his  death  to 
account  for  so  many  efforts  and  intentions. 

In  the  latter  part  of  May,  1771,  Gray  went  up  to  Lon- 
don, to  his  lodgings  in  Jermyn  Street,  where,  as  has  been 
already  mentioned,  he  received  the  farewell  visit  from 
Nichols.  He  was  profoundly  wretched  ;  writing  to  Whar- 
ton, he  said:  "Till  this  year  I  hardly  knew  what  mechan- 
ical low  spirits  were ;  but  now  I  even  tremble  at  an  east 
wind."  His  cough  was  incurable,  the  neuralgic  pains  in 
his  head  were  chronic.  William  Robinson,  in  describing 
his  last  interview  with  him,  said  that  Gray  talked  of  his 
own  career  as  a  poet,  lamented  that  he  had  done  so  little, 
and  began  at  last,  in  a  repining  tone,  to  complain  that  he 
had  lost  his  health  just  when  he  had  become  easy  in  his 
circumstances ;  but  on  that  he  checked  himself,  saying 
that  it  was  wrong  to  rail  against  Providence.  As  he  grew 
worse  and  worse,  he  placed  himself  under  a  physician, 
Dr.  Gisborne,  who  ordered  him  to  leave  Bloomsbury,  and 
try  a  clearer  air  at  Kensington.  Probably  the  last  call  he 
ever  paid  was  on  Walpole ;  for  hearing  that  his  old  friend 
was  about  to  set  out  for  Paris,  Gray  visited  him.  "  He 
complained  of  being  ill,"  says  Walpole, "  and  talked  of 
the  gout  in  bis  stomach,  but  I  expected  his  death  no  more 
than  my  own."  During  the  month  of  June  he  received 
the  MS.  of  Gilpin's  Tour  down  the  Wye,  and  enriched 
this  work,  which  was  not  published  until  1782,  with  his 
notes,  being  reminiscences  of  his  journey  of  the  preceding 
year. 

On  the  22d  of  July,  finding  himself  alone  in  London, 


204  GRAY.  [chap. 

and  overwhelmed  with  dejection  and  the  shadow  of  death, 
he  came  back  to  Cambridge.  It  was  his  intention  to  rest 
there  a  day  or  two,  and  then  to  proceed  to  Old  Park, 
where  the  Whartons  were  ready  to  receive  him.  He  put 
himself  under  the  treatment  of  his  physician,  Dr.  Robert 
Glynn,  who  had  been  the  author  of  a  successful  Seaton- 
ian  poem,  and  who  dabbled  in  literature.  This  Dr.  Glynn 
was  conspicuous  for  his  gold-headed  cane,  scarlet  coat, 
three-cornered  hat,  and  resounding  pattens  for  thirty  years 
after  Gray's  death,  and  retains  a  niche  in  local  history  as 
the  last  functionary  of  the  University  who  was  buried  by 
torch-light.  Dr.  Glynn  was  not  at  all  anxious  about  Gray's 
condition,  but  on  Wednesday,  the  24th,  the  poet  was  so 
languid  that  his  friend  James  Brown  wrote  for  him  to  Dr. 
Wharton,  to  warn  him  that,  though  Gray  did  not  give 
over  the  hopes  of  taking  his  journey  to  Old  Park,  he  was 
very  low  and  feverish,  and  could  hardly  start  immediately. 
That  very  night,  whilst  at  dinner  in  the  College  Hall  at 
Pembroke,  Gray  felt  a  sudden  nausea,  which  obliged  him 
to  go  hurriedly  to  his  own  room.  He  lay  down,  but  he 
became  so  violently  and  constantly  sick,  that  he  sent  his 
servant  to  fetch  in  Dr.  Glynn,  who  was  puzzled  at  the 
symptoms,  but  believed  that  there  was  no  cause  for  alarm. 
Gray  grew  worse,  however,  for  the  gout  had  reached  the 
stomach  ;  Dr.  Glynn  became  alarmed,  and  sent  for  Russell 
Plumptre,  the  Regius  Professor  of  Physic.  The  old  doctor 
was  in  bed,  and  refused  to  get  up,  for  which  he  was  after- 
wards severely  blamed.  No  skill,  however,  could  have 
saved  Gray.  He  got  through  the  25th  pretty  well,  and 
slept  tolerably  that  night,  but  after  taking  some  asses'- 
milk,  on  the  morning  of  the  26th,  the  spasms  in  the 
stomach  returned  again.  Dr.  Brown  scarcely  left  him 
after  the  first  attack,  and  wrote  to  all  his  principal  friends 


ix.]  DEATH.  20.1 

from  the  side  of  his  bed.  On  this  day,  Thursday,  the 
Master  could  still  hope  "  that  we  shall  sec  him  well  again 
in  a  short  time."  On  Sunday,  the  29th,  Gray  was  taken 
with  a  strong  convulsive  fit,  and  these  recurred  until  he 
died.  He  retained  his  senses  almost  to  the  last.  Stone- 
hewer  and  Dr.  Gisborne  arrived  from  London  on  the  30th 
and  took  leave  of  their  dying  friend.  His  language  be- 
came less  and  less  coherent,  and  he  was  not  clearly  able 
to  explain  to  Brown,  without  a  great  effort,  where  his  will 
would  be  found.  He  seemed  perfectly  sensible  of  his 
condition,  but  expressed  no  concern  at  the  thought  of 
leaving  the  world.  Towards  the  end  he  did  not  suffer  at 
all,  but  lay  in  a  sort  of  torpor,  out  of  which  he  woke  to 
call  for  his  niece,  Miss  Mary  Antrobus.  She  took  his 
hand,  and  he  said  to  her  in  a  clear  voice,  "  Molly,  I  shall 
die !"  He  lay  quietly  after  this,  without  attempting  to 
speak,  and  ceased  to  breathe  about  eleven  o'clock,  an 
hour  before  midnight,  on  the  30th  of  July,  1771,  aged 
fifty-four  years,  seven  months,  and  four  days. 

James  Brown  found,  in  the  spot  which  Gray  had  indi- 
cated, his  will.  It  was  dated  July  2, 1770,  and  must  there- 
fore have  been  drawn  up  just  before  he  started  on  his  tour 
through  the  Western  Counties.  Mason  and  Brown  were 
named  his  executors.  He  left  his  property  divided  amongst 
a  great  number  of  relations  and  friends,  reserving  the 
largest  portions  for  his  niece,  Miss  Mary  Antrobus,  and 
her  sister,  Mrs.  Dorothy  Comyns,  both  of  whom  were  resi- 
dents at  Cambridge,  and  who  had  probably  looked  to  his 
comfort  of  late  years  as  he  had  considered  their  prospects 
in  earlier  life.  The  faithful  Stephen  Hempstead  was  not 
forgotten,  whilst  Mason  and  Brown  were  left  residuary 
legatees.  On  Brown  fell  the  whole  burden  of  attending 
to  the  funeral,  for  Mason  could  not  be  found ;  he  had 


206  GRAY.  [chat. 

taken  a  holiday,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  whole  matter 
until  his  letters  reached  him,  in  a  cluster,  at  Bridlington 
Quay,  about  the  7th  of  August. 

By  this  time  Gray  was  buried.  Brown  took  the  body, 
in  a  coffin  of  seasoned  oak,  to  London,  and  thence  to  Stoke, 
where,  on  the  6th  of  August,  it  was  deposited  in  the  vault 
which  contained  that  of  Gray's  mother.  The  mourners 
were  Miss  Antrobus,  her  sister's  husband,  Mr.  Comyns,  a 
shopkeeper  at  Cambridge,  "  a  young  gentleman  of  Christ's 
College,  with  whom  Mr.  Gray  was  very  intimate,"  and 
Brown  himself ;  these  persons  followed  the  hearse  in  a 
mourning  coach.  The  sum  of  ten  pounds  was,  at  the 
poet's  express  wish,  distributed  among  certain  "  honest 
and  industrious  poor  persons  in  the  parish"  of  Stoke- 
Pogis.  As  soon  as  Mason  heard  the  news  he  crossed  the 
Humber,  and  reached  Cambridge  the  next  day.  Brown 
was  a  very  cautious  and  punctilious  man,  and  no  sooner 
had  he  returned  to  Cambridge  than  he  insisted  that  Mason 
should  go  up  to  town  with  him  and  prove  the  will.  Mason, 
who  throughout  showed  a  characteristic  callousness,  grum- 
bled, but  agreed,  and  on  the  12  th  of  August  the  will  was 
proved  in  London. 

The  executors  returned  immediately  to  Cambridge,  de- 
livered up  the  plate,  jewellery,  linen,  and  furniture  to  the 
Antrobuses,  and  then  Mason  packed  up  the  books  and 
papers  to  be  removed  to  his  rooms  at  York.  Once  set- 
tled there,  on  the  18th,  he  began  to  enjoy  the  luxury  of 
a  literary  bereavement.  "  Come,"  he  says  to  Dr.  Whar- 
ton— "  come,  I  beseech  you,  and  condole  with  me  on  our 
mutual,  our  irreparable  loss.  The  great  charge  which  his 
dear  friendship  has  laid  upon  me  I  feel  myself  unable  to 
execute,  without  the  advice  and  assistance  of  his  best 
friends ;  you  arc  amongst  the  first  of  these."    It  will  hardly 


ix.]  DEATH.  2C* 

be  believed  tbat  the  "great  charge"  so  pompously  refer- 
red to  here  is  contained  in  these  exceedingly  simple  words 
of  Gray  :  "  I  give  to  the  Reverend  William  Mason,  Pre- 
centor of  York,  all  my  books,  manuscripts,  coins,  music, 
printed  or  written,  and  papers  of  all  kinds,  to  preserve  or 
destroy  at  his  own  discretion."  There  is  no  shadow  of 
doubt  that  the  ambitious  and  worldly  Mason  saw  here  an 
opportunity  of  achieving  a  great  literary  success,  and  that 
he  lost  no  time  in  posing  as  Gray's  representative  and 
confidant.  A  few  people  resisted  his  pretensions,  such 
as  Robinson  and  Nichols,  but  they  were  not  writers,  and 
Mason  revenged  himself  by  ignoring  them.  Nor  did  he 
take  the  slightest  notice  of  Bonstetten. 

James  Brown,  le  petit  bon  homme  with  the  warm  heart, 
was  kinder  and  less  ambitious.  He  wrote  thoughtful  let- 
ters to  every  one,  and  particularly  to  the  three  friends  in 
exile,  to  Horace  Walpolc,  Nichols,  and  Bonstetten.  Wal- 
pole  was  struck  cold  in  the  midst  of  his  frivolities,  as  if 
he  had  suffered  in  his  own  person  a  touch  of  paralysis ;  in 
his  letters  he  seems  to  whimper  and  shiver,  as  much  with 
apprehension  as  with  sorrow.  Norton  Nichols  gave  a  cry 
of  grief,  and  very  characteristically  wrote  instantly  to  his 
mother,  lest  she,  knowing  his  love  for  Gray,  should  fear 
that  the  shock  would  make  him  ill.  From  this  exquisite 
letter  we  must  cite  some  lines : 

"  I  only  write  now  lest  you  should  be  apprehensive  on  my  account 
since  the  death  of  my  dear  friend.  Yesterday's  post  brought  me  the 
fatal  news,  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Brown,  that  Mr.  Gray  (all  that  was 
most  dear  to  me  in  this  world  except  yourself)  died  in  the  night, 
about  eleven  o'clock,  between  the  30th  and  31st  of  July.  .  .  .  You 
need  not  be  alarmed  for  me ;  I  am  well,  and  not  subject  to  emotions 
violent  enough  to  endanger  my  health,  and  besides  with  good,  kind 
people  who  pity  me  and  can  feel  themselves.  Afflicted  you  may  be 
sure  I  am !  You  who  know  I  considered  Mr.  Gray  as  a  second  par- 
10 


208  GRAY.  [chap. 

ent,  that  I  thought  only  of  him,  built  all  my  happiness  on  him,  talked 
of  him  forever,  wished  him  with  me  whenever  I  partook  of  any  pleas- 
ure, and  flew  to  him  for  refuge  whenever  I  felt  any  uneasiness ;  to 
whom  now  shall  I  talk  of  all  I  have  seen  here  ?  Who  will  teach  me 
to  read,  to  think,  to  feel  ?  I  protest  to  you,  that  whatever  I  did  or 
thought  had  a  reference  to  him — '  Mr.  Gray  will  be  pleased  with  this 
when  I  tell  him.  I  must  ask  Mr.  Gray  what  he  thinks  of  such  a 
person  or  thing.  He  would  like  such  a  person  or  dislike  such  anoth- 
er.' If  I  met  with  any  chagrins,  I  comforted  myself  that  I  had  a 
treasure  at  home;  if  all  the  world  had  despised  and  hated  me,  I 
should  have  thought  myself  perfectly  recompensed  in  his  friendship. 
Now  remains  only  one  loss  more ;  if  I  lose  you,  I  am  left  alone  in 
the  world.  At  present  I  feel  I  have  lost  half  of  myself.  Let  me 
hear  that  you  are  well." 

Thirty -four  years  afterwards  the  hand  which  penned 
these  unaffected  lines  wrote  down  those  reminiscences — 
alas!  too  brief — which  constitute  the  most  valuable  im- 
pressions of  Gray  that  we  possess.  It  is  impossible  not  to 
regret  that  this  sincere  and  tender  friend  did  not  under- 
take that  labour  of  biography  which  fell  into  more  skilled, 
but  coarser,  hands  than  his.  Yet  it  is  no  little  matter  to 
possess  this  first  outflow  of  grief  and  affection.  It  assures 
us  that,  with  all  his  melancholy  and  self-torture,  the  great 
spirit  of  Gray  was  not  without  its  lively  consolations,  and 
that  he  gained  of  Heaven  the  boon  for  which  he  had 
prayed,  a  friend  of  friends.  Nichols,  Bonstetten,  Robin- 
son, Wharton,  Stonehewer,  and  Brown  were  undistinguish- 
ed names  of  unheroic  men  who  are  interesting  to  posterity 
only  because,  with  that  unselfish  care  which  only  a  great 
character  and  sweetness  of  soul  have  power  to  rouse,  they 
loved,  honoured,  cherished  this  silent  and  melancholy  anch- 
orite. Dearer  friends,  better  and  more  devoted  companions 
through  a  slow  and  unexhilarating  career,  no  man  famous 
in  literature  has  possessed,  and  we  feel  that  not  to  recog- 


ix.]  DEATH.  209 

nizc  this  magnetic  power  of  attracting  good  souls  around 
him  would  be  to  lose  sight  of  Gray's  peculiar  and  signal 
charm.  It  is  true  that,  like  the  moon,  he  was  "  dark  to 
them,  and  silent;"  that  he  received,  and  lacked  the  power 
to  give ;  they  do  not  seem  to  have  required  from  him  the 
impossible,  they  accepted  his  sympathy,  and  rejoiced  in  his 
inexpressive  affection ;  and  when  he  was  taken  from  them 
they  regarded  his  memory  as  fanatics  regard  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  the  founder  of  their  faith.  Gray  "  never 
spoke  out,"  Brown  said  ;  he  lived,  more  even  than  the  rest 
of  us,  in  an  involuntary  isolation,  a  pathetic  type  of  the 
solitude  of  the  soul. 

"  Yes !  in  the  sea  of  life  enisled, 
With  echoing  straits  between  us  thrown, 
Dotting  the  shoreless  watery  wild, 
We  mortal  myriads  live  alone. 
The  islands  feel  the  enclasping  flow, 
And  then  their  endless  bounds  they  know." 


CHAPTER  X. 

POSTHrMOUS. 

The  earliest  tribute  to  the  mind  and  character  of  Gray 
was  published  in  1772  in  the  March  number  of  a  rather 
dingy  periodical,  issued  under  Dr.  Johnson's  protection, 
and  entitled  The  London  Magazine.  This  was  written  in 
the  form  of  a  letter  to  Boswell  by  a  man  who  had  little 
sympathy  with  Gray  as  a  poet  or  as  a  wit,  but  was  well 
fitted  to  comprehend  him  as  a  scholar,  the  Reverend  Wil- 
liam J.  Temple,  Rector  of  St.  Glavias.  This  gentleman, 
who  had  been  a  Fellow  of  Trinity  Hall  during  Gray's  resi- 
dence in  Cambridge,  and  who  is  frequently  mentioned  in 
the  poet's  later  letters,  was  almost  the  only  existing  link 
between  the  circles  ruled  respectively  by  Gray  and  Samuel 
Johnson,  Cole  being  perhaps  the  one  other  person  known 
to  both  these  mutually  repellent  individuals.  Temple's 
contribution  to  the  London  Magazine  is  styled  A  Sketch 
of  the  Character  of  the  Celebrated  Poet,  Mr.  Gray,  and  is 
ushered  in  by  the  editor  with  some  perfunctory  compli- 
ments to  the  poems.  But  Temple's  own  remarks  are  very 
valuable,  and  may  be  reprinted  here,  especially  as  the  care- 
ful Mitford  and  every  succeeding  writer  seem  to  have  been 
content  to  quote  them  from  Johnson's  inaccurate  transcript : 

"Perhaps  Mr.  Gray  was  the  most  learned  man  in  Europe:  he  was 
equally  acquainted  with  the  elegant  and  profound  part3  of  science, 
and  not  superficially,  but  thoroughly.     He  knew  every  branch  of  his- 


chap,  x.]  POSTHUMOUS.  211 

tory,  both  natural  and  civil ;  had  read  all  the  original  historians  of 
England,  France,  and  Italy ;  and  was  a  great  antiquarian.  Criticism, 
metaphysics,  morals,  politics,  made  a  principal  part  of  his  plan  of 
study.  Voyages  and  travels  of  all  sorts  were  his  favourite  amuse- 
ment ;  and  he  had  a  fine  taste  in  painting,  prints,  architecture,  and 
gardening.  With  such  a  fund  of  knowledge,  his  conversation  must 
have  been  equally  instructing  and  entertaining.  But  he  was  also  a 
good  man,  a  well-bred  man,  a  man  of  virtue  and  humanity.  There  is 
no  character  without  some  speck,  some  imperfection ;  and  I  think  the 
greatest  defect  in  his  was  an  affectation  in  delicacy,  or  rather  effemi- 
nacy, and  a  visible  fastidiousness  or  contempt  and  disdain  of  his  in- 
feriors in  science.  He  also  had  in  some  degree  that  weakness  which 
disgusted  Voltaire  so  much  in  Mr.  Congreve.  Though  he  seemed  to 
value  others  chiefly  according  to  the  progress  they  had  made  in 
knowledge,  yet  he  could  not  bear  to  be  considered  himself  merely  as 
a  man  of  letters  ;  and  though  without  birth,  or  fortune,  or  station,  his 
desire  was  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  private  gentleman,  who  read  for 
his  amusement." 

Against  the  charge  of  priggishness,  which  seems  to  be 
contained  in  these  last  lines,  we  may  place  Norton  Nich- 
ols's anecdote,  that  having  in  the  early  part  of  their  ac- 
quaintance remarked  that  some  person  was  "a  clever 
man,"  he  was  cut  short  by  Gray,  who  said,  "  Tell  me  if  he 
is  good  for  anything."  Another  saying  of  his,  that  genius 
and  the  highest  acquirements  of  science  were  as  nothing 
compared  with  "that  exercise  of  right  reason  which  Plato 
called  virtue,"  is  equally  distinct  as  evidence  that  he  did 
not  place  knowledge  above  conduct.  But  the  earlier  part 
of  Temple's  article,  which  regards  Gray's  learning  and  ac- 
quisitions of  every  sort,  is  of  great  value.  Another  of  the 
poet's  contemporaries,  Robert  Potter,  the  translator  of 
-^Eschylus,  and  one  of  the  foremost  scholars  of  the  time, 
followed  with  a  similar  statement :  "  Mr.  Gray  was  per- 
haps the  most  learned  man  of  the  age,  but  his  mind  never 
contracted   the  rust  of  pedantry,     lie  had  too  good  an 


212  GRAY.  [chap. 

understanding  to  neglect  that  urbanity  which  renders  so- 
ciety pleasing :  his  conversation  was  instructing,  elegant, 
and  agreeable.  Superior  knowledge,  an  exquisite  taste  in 
the  fine  arts,  and,  above  all,  purity  of  morals,  and  an  unaf- 
fected reverence  for  religion,  made  this  excellent  person  an 
ornament  to  society,  and  an  honour  to  human  nature." 

Mason  lost  no  time  in  giving  out  that  he  was  collecting 
materials  for  a  life  of  Gray.  His  first  literary  act  was  to 
print  for  private  circulation  in  1772  the  opening  book  of 
his  didactic  poem  The  English  Garden,  which  he  had 
written  as  early  as  1767,  but  which  Gray  had  never  al- 
lowed him  to  print,  speaking  freely  of  it  as  being  non- 
sense. But  Mason  loved  the  children  of  his  brain,  and 
could  not  support  the  idea  that  one  of  them  should  be 
withheld  from  the  world.  With  great  naivete  he  at- 
tempted to  argue  the  matter  with  the  shade  of  his  great 
friend  in  a  third  book  which  he  added  in  1772 : 

"  Clos'd  is  that  curious  ear,  by  Death's  cold  hand, 
That  mark'd  each  error  of  my  careless  strain 
With  kind  severity  ;  to  whom  my  Muse 
Still  lov'd  to  whisper  what  she  meant  to  sing 
In  louder  accent ;  to  whose  taste  supreme 
She  first  and  last  appealed." 

But  still  the  departed  friend  may  be  invoked  by  the  Muse, 

"And  still,  by  Fancy  sooth'd, 
"  Fain  would  she  hope  her  Gray  attends  the  call." 

Mason  then  refers,  in  the  flat,  particular  manner  native  to 
eighteenth  century  elegy,  to  the  urn  and  bust  and  sculpt- 
ured lyre  which  he  had  placed  to  the  memory  of  Gray  in 
a  rustic  alcove  in  the  garden  at  Aston,  and  then  he  ap- 
proaches the  awkward  circumstance  that  Gray  considered 
The  English  Garden  trash : 


i.]  POSTHUMOUS.  213 

"  Oft, '  smiling  as  in  scorn,'  oft  would  he  cry, 
'Why  waste  thy  numbers  on  a  trivial  art 
That  ill  can  mimic  even  the  humblest  charms 
Of  all-majestic  Nature?'     At  the  word 
His  eye  would  glisten,  and  his  accents  glow 
With  all  the  poet's  frenzy  :  '  Sovereign  Queen ! 
Behold,  and  tremble,  while  thou  viewest  her  state 
Thron'd  on  the  heights  of  Skiddaw  :  trace  her  march 
Amid  the  purple  crags  of  Borrowdale. 

.  .  .  Will  thy  boldest  song 
E'er  brace  the  sinews  of  enervate  art 
To  such  dread  daring  ?     Will  it  even  direct 
Her  hand  to  emulate  those  softer  charms 
That  deck  the  banks  of  Dove,  or  call  to  birth 
The  bare  romantic  crags  ?'  "  etc. 

It  seems  highly  probable  that,  stripped  of  the  charms 
of  blank  verse,  this  is  precisely  what  Gray  was  constantly 
saying  to  Mason,  who  greatly  preferred  artificial  cascades 
and  myrtle  grots  to  all  the  mountains  in  Christendom. 
On  the  fly-leaf  of  this  private  edition  of  The  English 
Garden  in  17*72  appeared  the  first  general  announcement 
of  the  coming  biography. 

The  work  progressed  very  slowly.  From  the  family  of 
West,  who  had  now  been  dead  thirty  years,  Mason  was 
fortunate  enough  to  secure  a  number  of  valuable  letters, 
but  it  was  difficult  to  fill  up  the  hiatus  between  the  close 
of  this  correspondence  and  the  beginning  of  Mason's 
personal  acquaintance  with  Gray.  Wharton  and  Horace 
Walpole  came  very  kindly  to  his  aid,  and  he  was  able  to 
collect  a  considerable  amount  of  material.  It  is  distress- 
ing  to  think  of  the  mass  of  papers,  letters,  verses,  and 
other  documents  which  Mason  possessed,  and  of  the  com- 
paratively small  use  which  he  made  of  them.  He  con- 
ceived the  happy  notion,  which  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  thought  of  by  any  previous  writer,  of  allowing  Gray 


214  GRAY.  [chap. 

to  tell  his  own  story  by  means  of  his  letters;  but  he 
vitiated  the  evidence  so  put  before  the  world  by  tamper- 
ing grossly  with  the  correspondence.  He  confessed  to 
Norton  Nichols,  who  was  angry  at  this,  that  "  much  lib- 
erty was  taken  in  transposing  parts  of  the  letters,"  but 
he  did  not  go  on  to  mention  that  he  allowed  himself  to 
interpolate  and  erase  passages,  to  conceal  proper  names, 
to  mutilate  the  original  MSS.,  and  to  alter  dates  and 
opinions.  He  was  very  anxious  that  what  he  called  his 
"  fidelity  "  should  not  "  be  impeached  "  to  the  public  and 
the  critics,  but  declared  that  he  had  only  acted  for  the 
honour  of  Gray  himself.  It  is  probable  that  in  his  fool- 
ish heart  Mason  really  did  consider  that  he  was  respect- 
ing Gray  in  thus  brushing  his  clothes  and  washing  his 
hands  for  him  before  allowing  the  world  to  see  him. 
He  thought  that  a  ruffled  wig  or  a  disordered  shoe-tie 
would  destroy  his  hero's  credit  with  the  judicious,  and 
accordingly  he  removed  all  that  was  silly  and  natural 
from  the  letters.  This  determination  to  improve  Gray 
has  marred,  also,  the  slender  thread  of  biography  by  which 
the  letters  are  linked  together,  yet  to  a  less  degree  than 
might  be  supposed,  and  the  student  finds  himself  con- 
stantly returning  to  Mason's  meagre  and  slipshod  narrative 
for  some  fact  which  has  been  less  exactly  stated  by  the 
far  more  careful  and  critical  Mitford.  Mason  had  too 
much  literary  ability,  and  had  known  Gray  too  intimately 
and  too  long,  to  make  his  book  other  than  valuable.  It 
is  faulty  and  unfinished,  but  it  is  a  sketch  from  the  life. 
It  appeared,  in  two  quarto  volumes,  in  June,  1775,  and 
was  received  with  great  warmth  by  the  critics,  the  public, 
and  all  but  the  intimate  friends  of  Gray.  Mason  often 
reprinted  this  book,  which  continued  to  be  a  sort  of  classic 
until  Mitford  commenced  his  investigations. 


x.]  POSTHUMOU&  216 

It  has  generally  been  acknowledged  that  Johnson's  life 
of  Gray  is  the  worst  section  in  his  delightful  series.  It 
formed  the  last  chapter  but  one  in  the  fourth  volume  of 
the  Lives  of  the  Poets,  and  was  written  when  its  author 
was  tired  of  his  task,  and  longing  to  be  at  rest  again.  It 
is  barren  and  meagre  of  fact  to  the  last  degree.  Cole, 
the  antiquary,  gave  into  Johnson's  charge  a  collection  of 
anecdotes  and  sayings  of  Gray  which  he  had  formed  in 
connexion  with  the  poet's  Cambridge  friends,  especially 
Tyson  and  Sparrow,  but  the  lexicographer  was  disinclined 
to  make  any  use  of  them,  and  they  were  dispersed  and 
lost.  We  have  already  seen  that  these  two  great  men, 
the  leading  men  of  letters  of  their  age  in  England,  were 
radically  wanting  in  sympathy.  Gray  disliked  Johnson 
personally,  apparently  preserving  the  memory  of  some 
chance  meeting  in  which  the  sage  had  been  painfully 
self-asserting  and  oppressive ;  he  was  himself  a  lover  of 
limpid  and  easy  prose,  and  a  master  of  the  lighter  parts 
of  writing,  and  therefore  condemned  the  style  of  Dr. 
Johnson  hastily,  as  being  wholly  turgid  and  vicious.  Yet 
he  respected  his  character,  and  has  recorded  the  fact  that 
Johnson  often  went  out  in  the  streets  of  London  with  his 
pockets  full  of  silver,  and  had  given  it  all  away  before 
he  returned  home. 

Johnson's  portrait  of  Gray  is  somewhat  more  judicial 
than  this,  but  just  as  unsympathetic.  Yet  he  made  one 
remark,  after  reading  a  few  of  Gray's  letters,  which  seems 
to  me  to  surpass  in  acumen  all  the  generalities  of  Mason, 
namely,  that  though  Gray  was  fastidious  and  hard  to  please, 
he  was  a  man  likely  to  love  much  where  he  loved  at  all. 
But  for  Gray's  poems  Johnson  had  little  but  bewilderment. 
If  they  had  not  received  the  warm  sanction  of  critics  like 
Warburton  and  Hurd,  and  the  admiration  of  such  friends 
P     10*  38 


216  GRAY.  [chap. 

of  his  own  as  Boswell  and  Garrick,  it  seems  likely  that 
Johnson  would  not  have  acknowledged  in  them  any  merit 
whatever.  "Where  he  approves  of  them  no  praise  could 
be  fainter ;  where  he  objects  he  is  even  more  trenchant 
and  contemptuous  than  usual.  The  Elegy  in  a  Country 
Church-yard  and  the  Ode  on  Adversity  are  the  only  pieces 
in  the  whole  repertory  of  Gray  to  which  he  allows  the 
tempered  eulogy  that  he  is  not  willing  to  withhold  from 
Mallet  or  Shenstone.  We  shall  probably  acquit  the  sturdy 
critic  of  any  unfairness,  even  involuntary,  when  we  per- 
ceive that  for  the  poetry  of  Collins,  who  was  his  friend 
and  the  object  of  his  benefactions,  he  has  even  less  toler- 
ation than  for  the  poetry  of  Gray. 

When  we  examine  Johnson's  strictures  more  exactly 
still  we  find  that  the  inconsistency  which  usually  accom- 
panied the  expression  of  his  literary  opinions  does  not 
forsake  him  here.  Even  when  Johnson  is  on  safe  ground, 
as  when  he  is  weighing  in  a  very  careful  balance  the  Epi- 
taphs of  Pope,  he  is  never  a  sure  critic ;  he  brings  his  ex- 
cellent common-sense  to  bear  on  the  subject  in  hand,  but 
is  always  in  too  great  haste  to  be  closing  not  to  omit  some 
essential  observation.  But  when  discussing  poetry  so  ro- 
mantic in  its  nature  as  that  of  Gray,  he  deals  blows  even 
more  at  random  than  usual.  The  Ode  on  Adversity  meets 
with  his  warmest  approbation,  and  he  suggests  no  objec- 
tion to  its  allegorical  machinery,  to  much  of  which  no 
little  exception  might  now  be  taken.  But  the  Eton  Ode, 
with  strange  want  of  caution,  he  declaims  against  in  de- 
tail, blaming  at  one  time  what  posterity  is  now  content  to 
admire,  and  at  the  other  what  his  own  practice  in  verse 
might  have  amply  justified.  "  The  Prospect  of  Eton  Col- 
lege suggests  nothing  to  Gray  which  every  beholder  does 
not  equally  think  and  feel ;"  that  is  to  say,  which  every 


r.]  POSTHUMOUS.  217 

susceptible  and  cultivated  beholder  does  not  feel  in  a  cer- 
tain vein  of  reflection  ;  but  this,  so  far  from  being  a  fault, 
is  the  touch  of  nature  which  makes  the  poem  universally 
interesting.  "  His  supplication  to  Father  Thames,  to  tell 
him  who  drives  the  hoop  or  tosses  the  ball,  is  useless  and 
puerile.  Father  Thames  has  no  better  means  of  knowing 
than  himself."  In  this  case  Johnson  was  instantly  re- 
minded that  Father  Nile  had  been  called  upon  for  infor- 
mation exactly  analogous  in  the  pages  of  Rasselas.  "  His 
epithet  buxom  health  is  not  elegant,"  but  to  us  it  seems 
appropriate,  which  is  better.  Finally,  Johnson  finds  that 
"  redolent  of  joy  and  youth "  is  an  expression  removed 
beyond  apprehension,  and  is  an  imitation  of  a  phrase  of 
Dryden's  misunderstood ;  but  here  Gray  proves  himself 
the  better  scholar.  It  may  be  conjectured  that  he  found 
this  word  redolent,  of  which  he  was  particularly  fond, 
amongst  the  old  Scots  poets  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
whom  he  was  the  first  to  unearth.  Dunbar  and  Scot  love 
to  talk  of  the  "  redolent  rose." 

The  phrases  above  quoted  constitute  Johnson's  entire 
criticism  of  the  Eton  Ode,  and  it  is  of  a  kind  which,  how- 
ever vigorously  expressed,  would  not  nowadays  be  consid- 
ered competent  before  the  least  accredited  of  tribunals. 
The  examination  of  the  two  Pindaric  odes  is  conducted 
on  more  conscientious  but  not  more  sympathetic  princi- 
ples. To  the  experiments  in  metre,  to  the  verbal  and 
quantitative  felicities,  Johnson  is  absolutely  deaf.  He  does 
not  entirely  deny  merit  to  the  poems,  but  he  contrives, 
most  ingeniously,  to  hesitate  contempt.  "  My  process,"  he 
says,  "  has  now  brought  me  to  the  wonderful  wonder  of 
wonders,  the  two  Sister  Odes ;  by  which,  though  either 
vulgar  ignorance  or  common-sense  at  first  universally  re- 
jected  them,  many  have  been   since  persuaded  to  think 


218  GRAY.  [chap. 

themselves  delighted.  I  am  one  of  those  that  are  willing 
to  be  pleased,  and  therefore  would  gladly  find  the  mean- 
ing of  the  first  stanza  of  the  Progress  of  Poetry"  John- 
son, it  is  obvious  enough,  is  on  the  side  of  "  common- 
sense."  The  difficulty  which  he  was  pleased  to  find  in 
the  opening  stanza  of  the  ode  is  one  which  he  would 
have  been  the  first  to  denounce  as  whimsical  and  paltry 
if  brought  forward  by  some  other  critic.  Gray  describes 
the  formation  of  poetry  under  the  symbol  of  a  widening 
river,  calm  and  broad  in  its  pastoral  moments,  loud,  riot- 
ous, and  resonant  when  swollen  by  passion  or  anger. 
Johnson,  to  whom  the  language  of  Greek  poetry  and  the 
temper  of  Greek  thought  were  uncongenial,  refused  to 
grasp  this  direct  imagery,  and  said  that  if  the  poet  was 
speaking  of  music,  the  expression  "  rolling  down  the  steep 
amain  "  was  nonsense,  and  if  of  water,  nothing  to  the  point. 
So  good  a  scholar  should  have  known,  and  any  biographer 
should  have  noticed,  that  Gray  had  pointed  out  that,  as 
usual  in  Pindar,  whom  he  is  here  closely  paraphrasing, 
the  subject  and  simile  are  united.  Johnson  was  careless 
enough  to  blame  Gray  for  inventing  the  compound  adjec- 
tive velvet-green,  although  Pope  and  Young,  poets  after 
Johnson's  own  heart,  had  previously  used  it.  The  rest  of 
his  criticism  is  equally  faulty,  and  from  the  same  causes — 
haste,  and  want  of  sympathy. 

Johnson's  attack  did  nothing  at  first  to  injure  Gray's 
position  as  a  poet.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  in 
the  process  of  time,  the  great  popularity  of  the  Lives  of 
the  Poets,  and  the  oblivion  into  which  Mason's  life  has 
fallen,  have  done  something  sensibly  to  injure  Gray  with 
the  unthinking.  Even  in  point  of  history  the  life  of  Gray 
is  culpably  full  of  errors,  and  might  as  well  have  been  writ- 
ten if  Mason's  laborious  work  had  never  been  published. 


x.]  POSTHUMOUS.  219 

There  is,  however,  one  point  on  which  Johnson  did  early 
justice  to  Gray,  and  that  is  in  commending  the  picturesque 
grace  of  his  descriptions  of  the  country.  Against  the  con- 
demnation of  Johnson  there  were  placed,  almost  instantly, 
the  enthusiastic  praises  of  Adam  Smith,  Gibbon,  Hume, 
Mackintosh,  and  others  of  no  less  authority,  who  were 
unanimous  in  ranking  his  poetry  only  just  below  that  of 
Shakspeare  and  Milton.  This  view  continued  until  the 
splendours  of  the  neo-romantic  school,  especially  the  rep- 
utations of  Wordsworth  and  Byron,  reduced  the  luminary 
and  deprived  it  of  its  excess  of  light.  The  Lake  School, 
particularly  Coleridge,  professed  that  Gray  had  been  un- 
fairly overrated,  and  it  was  rather  Byron  and  Shelley  who 
sustained  his  fame,  as  in  some  directions  they  continued 
his  tradition. 

It  would  be  to  leave  this  little  memoir  imperfect  if  we 
did  not  follow  the  destinies  of  that  group  of  intimate 
friends  who  survived  the  poet,  and  whose  names  are  in- 
dissolubly  connected  with  his.  The  one  who  died  first 
was  Lord  Strathmore,  who  passed  away,  prematurely,  in 
1776.  James  Brown  continued  to  hold  the  Mastership 
of  Pembroke,  and  to  enjoy  the  reputation  of  a  gentle  and 
good-natured  old  man,  until  1784,  when  he  followed  his 
friend  to  the  grave.  Young  men  of  letters,  such  as  Sir 
Egerton  Brydges,  considered  it  a  privilege  to  be  asked  to 
the  Master's  Lodge,  and  to  take  tea  with  the  man  in  whose 
arms  Gray  breathed  his  last,  although  Brown  had  no  great 
power  of  reminiscence,  and  had  not  much  to  tell  such 
eager  questioners.  Of  himself  it  was  told  that  his  ways 
were  so  extremely  punctilious  as  to  amuse  Gray,  himself  a 
very  regular  man,  and  that  once,  when  the  friends  were 
going  to  start  together  at  a  certain  hour,  and  the  time  had 
just  arrived,  Brown  rose  and  began  to  walk  to  and  fro, 


220  GRAY.  [chap. 

whereupon  Gray  exclaimed,  "  Look  at  Brown,  he  is  going 
to  strike !"  Dr.  Thomas  Wharton  (who  must  never  be  con- 
founded with  Thomas  Warton,  the  poet-laureate)  continued 
to  live  at  his  house  at  Old  Park,  Durham,  where  Gray  had 
so  often  spent  delightful  weeks.  He  died  in  1794  at  a 
great  age,  and  left  his  ample  correspondence  with  Gray 
to  his  second  son,  a  man  of  some  literary  pretensions,  of 
whom  Sir  Egerton  Brydges  has  given  an  interesting  ac- 
count. Mason  and  Walpole,  whose  careers  are  too  well 
known  to  be  dwelt  upon  here,  survived  their  celebrated 
friend  by  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Horace 
Walpole  died  on  March  2,  and  Mason  on  April  4, 1797. 

At  the  close  of  the  century  several  of  Gray's  early  friends 
still  survived.  The  Rev.  William  Robinson,  having  reach- 
ed the  age  of  seventy-six,  died  in  December,  1803.  On  his 
tomb  in  the  church  of  Monks'  Horton,  in  Kent,  it  was 
stated  that  he  was  "especially  intimate  with  the  poet 
Gray,"  with  whom  he  probably  became  acquainted  through 
the  accident  that  his  mother,  after  his  father's  death,  made 
Dr.  Conyers  Middleton  her  second  husband.  His  sister 
was  the  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Montagu  who  wrote  the  Essay  on 
Shakspeare,  and  who  patronized  Dr.  Johnson.  The  kind 
and  faithful  Stonehewer  died  at  a  very  advanced  age  in 
1809,  bequeathing  to  Pembroke  Hall  those  commonplace- 
books  of  Gray's  from  which  Mathias  reaped  his  bulky  vol- 
umes, and  yet  left  much  for  me  to  glean.  Norton  Nichols 
died  Rector  of  Lound  and  Bradwell,  in  Suffolk,  on  the  22d 
of  November,  in  the  same  year,  1809,  having  fortunately 
placed  on  paper,  four  years  before,  his  exquisite  reminis- 
cences of  Gray.  He  also  bears  on  his  memorial  tablet,  in 
Richmond  church,  his  claim  to  the  regard  of  posterity  : 
"  He  was  the  friend  of  the  illustrious  Gray." 

The  most  remarkable,  certainly  the  most  original,  of 


x.]  POSTHUMOUS.  221 

Gray's  friends,  was  also  the  most  long-lived.  Charles 
Victor  de  Bonstetten  had  but  just  begun  his  busy  and  ec- 
centric career  when  he  crossed  the  orbit  of  Gray.  He  lived 
not  merely  to  converse  with  Byron  but  to  survive  him,  and 
to  see  a  new  age  of  literature  inaugurated.  He  was  a  co- 
pious writer,  and  his  works  enjoyed  a  certain  vogue.  His 
well-known  description  of  Gray  occurs  in  a  book  of  studies 
published  in  1831,  the  year  before  he  died,  Les  Souvenirs 
du  Chevalier  de  Bonstetten.  In  the  most  chatty  of  his 
books,  L 'Homme  du  Midi  et  Vhomme  du  JYord,  he  says 
that  he  found  in  England  that  friendship  of  the  most  in- 
timate kind  could  subsist  between  persons  who  were  satis- 
fied to  remain  absolutely  silent  in  one  another's  presence. 
There  may  be  a  touch  of  the  reserve  of  Gray  in  this  vague 
allusion. 

In  Bonstetten  the  romantic  seed  which  Gray  may  be 
supposed  to  have  sown  burst  into  extravagant  blossom. 
His  conduct  in  private  life  seems,  from  what  can  be  gath- 
ered, to  have  been  founded  on  a  perusal  of  La  Nouvelle 
Heloise,  and  though  he  was  a  pleasant  little  fat  man,  with 
rosy  cheeks,  his  conduct  was  hardly  up  to  the  standard 
which  Gray  would  have  approved  of.  Bonstetten  may, 
perhaps,  be  described  as  a  smaller  Benjamin  Constant ; 
like  him,  he  was  Swiss  by  birth,  first  roused  to  intellectual 
interest  in  England,  and  finally  sentimentalized  in  Ger- 
many ;  but  he  was  not  quite  capable  of  writing  Adolphe. 
Bonstetten  followed  Gray  in  studying  the  Scandinavian 
tongues ;  he  acquainted  himself  with  Icelandic,  and  wrote 
copiously,  though  not  very  wisely,  on  the  Eddas.  He 
brought  out  a  German  edition  of  his  works  at  Copen- 
hagen, where  he  spent  some  time,  and  whither  he  pur- 
sued his  eccentric  friend  Matthison.  Bonstetten  died  at 
Genoa  in  February,  1832,  at  the  age  of  eighty-seven.    The 


222  GRAY.  [chap. 

last  survivor  amongst  people  whom  Gray  knew  was  prob- 
ably the  Earl  of  Burlington,  "  little  brother  George,"  who 
died  in  1834.  Perhaps  the  last  person  who  was  certainly 
in  Gray's  presence  was  Sir  Samuel  Egerton  Brydges,  who 
was  present,  at  the  age  of  three,  at  a  wedding  at  which 
Gray  assisted,  and  who  died  in  1837. 

Gray  was  rather  short  in  stature,  of  graceful  build  in 
early  life,  but  too  plump  in  later  years.  He  walked  in  a 
wavering  and  gingerly  manner,  the  result,  probably,  of 
weakness.  Besides  the  portraits  already  described  in  the 
body  of  this  memoir,  there  is  a  painting  at  Pembroke 
Hall  by  Benjamin  Wilson,  F.R.S.,  a  versatile  artist,  whose 
work  was  at  one  time  considered  equal  to  that  of  Ho- 
garth. This  portrait  is  in  profile ;  it  was  evidently  paint- 
ed towards  the  close  of  the  poet's  life ;  the  cheeks  are 
puffed,  and  the  lips  have  fallen  inwards  through  lack  of 
teeth.  Gray  is  also  stated  to  have  sat  to  one  of  the  Van- 
dcrguchts,  but  this  portrait  seems  to  have  disappeared. 
In  17  7  8  Mason  commissioned  the  famous  sculptor  John 
Bacon,  who  was  just  then  executing  various  works  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  to  carve  the  medallion  now  existing 
in  Poets'  Corner;  as  Bacon  had  never  seen  Gray,  Mason 
lent  him  a  profile  drawing  by  himself,  the  original  of 
which,  a  hideous  little  work,  is  now  preserved  at  Pem- 
broke. A  bust  of  Gray,  by  Behnes,  founded  on  the  full- 
face  portrait  by  Eckhardt,  stands,  with  those  of  other  fa- 
mous scholars,  in  Upper  School,  at  Eton. 

No  monument  of  any  kind  perpetuates  the  memory  of 
Gray  in  the  university  town  where  he  resided  so  long,  and 
of  which  he  is  one  of  the  most  illustrious  ornaments.  In 
1776,  according  to  a  College  Order  which  Mr.  J.  W. 
Clark  has  kindly  copied  for  me:  "James  Brown,  Master, 
and   William   Mason,  Fellow,  each   gave   fifty  pounds  to 


x.J  POSTHUMOUS.  223 

establish  a  building  fund  in  memory  of  Thomas  Gray 
the  Poet,  who  had  long  resided  in  the  College."  The 
fund  so  started  gradually  accumulated  until  it  amounted 
to  a  very  large  sum.  Certain  alterations  were  made,  but 
nothing  serious  was  attempted  until  about  thirty  years 
ago,  Mr.  Cory,  a  Fellow  of  the  college,  took  down  the 
Christopher  Wren  doorway  to  the  hall,  and  attempted  to 
harmonize  the  whole  structure  to  Gothic.  Still  the  Gray 
Building  Fund  was  accumulating,  and  the  college  was  be- 
coming less  and  less  able  to  accommodate  its  inhabitants. 
It  was  determined  at  last  to  carry  out  the  scheme  pro- 
posed nearly  a  century  before  by  Brown  and  Mason.  In 
March,  1870,  the  work  was  put  into  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Alfred  Waterhouse.  He  was  at  work  on  the  college  until 
1879,  and  in  his  hands,  if  it  is  no  longer  picturesque,  it  is 
thoroughly  comfortable  and  habitable. 

It  is  unfortunate  that,  in  all  this  vast  expenditure  of 
money,  not  one  penny  was  spent  in  commemoration  of 
the  man  in  whose  name  it  was  collected.  Not  a  medal- 
lion, not  a  tablet  within  Pembroke  College  bears  witness 
to  any  respect  for  the  memory  of  Gray  on  the  part  of  the 
society  amongst  whom  he  lived  for  so  many  years.  In- 
deed, if  strangers  did  not  periodically  inquire  for  his 
room,  it  is  probable  that  the  name  of  Gray  would  be 
as  completely  forgotten  at  Pembroke  as  at  Pctcrhouse, 
where  also  no  monument  of  any  kind  preserves  the  record 
of  his  presence.  When  we  reflect  how  differently  the 
fame  of  a  great  man  is  honoured  in  France  or  Germany 
or  Italy,  we  have  little  on  which  to  congratulate  our 
national  self-satisfaction. 

THE   END. 


R  EC-El  V  ED 
MAIN  LOAN  DESK 

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